


Attachment Issues

by DustToDust



Category: S.W.A.T. (2003), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Clint Barton is Brian Gamble, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-18
Updated: 2014-08-21
Packaged: 2017-12-23 23:14:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 26,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/932215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DustToDust/pseuds/DustToDust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SHIELD had no problems with undercover agents forming attachments on missions. Just so long as once the mission was over the agent understood that any attachments formed during it were over as well. Clint Barton tries not to form anything beyond workplace acquaintances when he joins the LAPD as Brian Gamble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This can best be summarized as me rolling around both movies while making incoherent squeeing noises and not giving one solid fuck about anything.

Captain Thomas Fuller, LAPD. Born into old money and even older politics. Graduated top of his class in nearly every school he went to and fast tracked his way up the ranks with ease that's drawn more than a few suspicious looks over the years. Rumors of money greasing the tracks and good old boy strings being pulled behind the scenes are common and not entirely unfounded. 

Nothing new or strange in the story. Until you ignored his rise and paid attention, real good attention, to the crimes under his watch.

Paid attention to the high numbers of arrests made and the low number of weapons and drugs impounded. The stellar track record of arresting local gangs and drug dealers, and their very low numbers of charges brought against the dealers from cartels or the gang members from international groups. Little discrepancies in the numbers and statistics that most people don't pay attention to. The first warning signs of something truly corrupt and rotten.

How SHIELD got interested in a matter best left to IA wasn't something that Clint is paid to wonder. He does that for free. Loudly and often during the briefing leading up to his mission. Coulson's mild paper-pusher stare informing him how very little a shit he gives for Clint's complaining and to get his bags packed.

Clint spends the trip to California hoping AIM is involved somehow, because he's been missing their special brand of crazy lately.

He finds a studio apartment waiting for him in a shithole neighborhood. The fridge is already filled with bottled lemonade and half-eaten Chinese food. Unobtrusively, on the bottom of each carton, Natahsa's slanted writing labels the dates each one had been bought. Clint heats up the one that looks newest, tosses his clothes around the apartment, noting the things that he hasn't brought but still look like they're his, and falls asleep in a bed that still smells like the plastic it'd been wrapped in at the store.

~

Fuller is reorganizing his department and Brian Gamble comes highly recommended from various enough sources that the man hasn't poked too hard at the background SHIELD had pulled out of their asses for Clint. He walks into the Metropolitan Division wearing a crisp uniform and trying not to itch the reopened holes in his ears.

There are a lot of starched uniforms and nervous young looking officers in the small room he enters. SWAT is a pipe dream for most of them, and Clint easily picks out the ones that have no chance in hell of getting in. He ignores them and casually slouches next to a dark haired man with military written all over him who looks almost as bored as Clint already is, "Hey."

The man, Street according to his nametag, takes his time looking Clint over before giving his own nod back, "Hey."

And as easy as that, Brian Gamble blends right in.

~

Compared to SHIELD conditioning the training is a joke and Clint has to concentrate hard on not being too good. Has to remember to act like it's his first time doing certain things. Pull his shots just a little. Just enough to be remarkable instead of extraordinary. Remember to trip over his feet a little when throwing the other trainees around on the mat. Keep his movements to a slow jog when clearing buildings instead of his usual sprint.

It's an exercise in frustration and having to do it all while acting as part of a team is a small blessing, because he's so used to how things are with him and Natasha that the constant presence of the others makes him fumble without having to think about it. Brian Gamble gets good marks in the training sessions and is chosen with a handful of others to work under Fuller's new Lieutenant.

Clint's not surprised when a grinning Street slouches next to him after the selections are made and gives him a friendly grin, "How about a beer to celebrate, man?"

"Fuck yeah," Clint grins and his sentiment is quickly echoed by the other men who have made the team.

~

It quickly becomes apparent that none of the men in SWAT follow up on their paperwork. Clint does a warrant raid that recovers a fugitive along with a truly impressive armory of weapons and ammunition. He gives a lowball estimate in the report he sends up after the bust.

Over a weeks’ time he watches silently as that low number is bounced around and gets lower and lower until the prosecution for the case only has possession of three unlicensed handguns to tack onto the man's list of crimes. A charge that is easily dismissed by the judge who is more intent on hammering the man for murder. No one from SWAT is called in to testify at all during the trial.

The weapons have already disappeared. Clint doubts they'd even made it into lockup after the SWAT team left the house with the fugitive in custody. There is no other reason why the evidence would be transferred between so many departments to scramble the paperwork before it all made its way back to Fuller.

It's a pattern that Clint sees continued over and over again. He watches as weapons and drugs disappear in the bureaucracy of the LAPD without a single alarm being raised. Recording each incident and quietly passing it along.

~

The bar is loud and almost as trashy as the shithole he lives in. The light is low and the bartender is selectively deaf/mute/blind for the right price. It's a sketchy as hell place for a bunch of cops to be hanging out in after work, but Clint only gives the guys Brian's cocky ass grin when they grumble about it.

"We found one of the AKs," Natasha giggles as she shifts in his lap. Taking a delicate sip of the flat hard-lemonade that she'd made him pay for before dragging him away from the others. Her hair is bubblegum pink and matches the rich looking clothes she's wearing like a second skin. Along with the coy way she slaps Clint's hands out from under her shirt she's the perfect picture of a rich daddy's girl going to the "bad" side to play a little. "Germany."

"Please tell me it's not Hydra," Clint gropes her through her clothes. Counting how many weapons she's brought with her to this meeting, and obviously enough that Street --meandering his way over with a couple of beers-- veers sharply back around to get lost in the bar crowd like a good wingman.

"I would," Tasha says, drawing her hot pink nails through the fringe of his hair. Scratching like he's a battered alley cat looking for treats. "But _someone_ made me swear to never lie to him."

"God _damn_ it," Clint swears with feeling and leans forward to bury his face in the cleavage that her shirt leaves bare. Black lace scratches against his lower lip as Tasha continues to pet him. "Have I said how much I hate those fuckers lately?" 

"Not since the last time they ruined one of your vacations," Tasha says as she unrepentantly plucks his beer out of his hand. The only sign she'll ever give about her distaste for the fruity drink she's been nursing along through the night.

Clint allows himself to rest against her for a few more minutes before Brian has to do something outrageous enough to get slapped and have the rich little girl bouncing out of the bar in a prissy huff never to be seen again.

~

Clint starts tagging everything. Every weapon, wad of bills, or brick of coke gets their own special low powered tracker. 

The money and drug trackers are almost useless. They get lost all too easily as the items are broken down, but last just long enough for SHIELD to map out the small players in the plot. Informants paid in hard cash for seemingly random rumors, or gangs given bricks shortly before they start something big and media attention worthy. 

Something is going on, something too large and subtle for Clint to see in the position he's in. That's alright with him though. SHIELD has analysts to do all that work. All he has to do is keep feeding them the raw data, keep tracking down the threads Hydra has put down in LA. 

"What the hell?" Street laughs as Clint changes out of a sweaty and slightly smoky smelling shirt. His eyes are trained on Clint's right arm. "Afraid you'll forget how to spell your own name?" 

"Nah," Clint glances at the jagua ink Natasha had spent last night placing on his body. He thinks about telling the man it isn't permanent. The light, blocky letters look like the start of a tattoo though and he'll probably get more shit if he denies it. "Got it so your mother'd know which name to scream out."

"Asshole!" Street punches him hard as the locker room bursts into laughter. Clint laughs as well and gives a mocking bow.

~

Jim Street is a good man. Clint learns that slowly as he gets a feel for the squad he's in now, and as the two of them are thrown together more and more often. He learns that as he learns that some of the other guys he's working with aren't good at all. 

Clint has already caught Morgan and Riley shifting bags of drugs around twice after a bust, and their paperwork never mentions any solid numbers on anything. No matter how many times they've been bitched at for it. Their names have also turned up several times in the trail of shuffled paperwork that the analysts have been crunching down looking for patterns.

Goose does the same thing, but in smaller quantities. Tasha had quickly confirmed the man wasn't part of the web they were after. He's just a crooked cop selling on the side to supplement his income in one of the worst ways possible. Doler, the man's usual partner, is an idiot too wet behind the ears and awed of his position to do anything about it. Clint gives the guy three more months of exposure to Goose before he's doing to same thing. 

Doley and Martin are sparkly clean in comparison. They're just the regular chest beating assholes that police departments always seem to attract. Still riding high on the position they've gotten and swaggering around like idiots. Clint aches some days to put them up against Natasha in a _real_ fight, but knows that'll never happen. Not unless something goes horribly, spectacularly wrong. 

Natasha had kicked him when he asked her about the probability of absolute catastrophe for the mission one night. 

Street is an honest to god relief when compared to the rest of the squad he's on, and Clint doesn't mind being partnered with him one bit. The man is also _good_ at his job, and Clint relishes not having to hold back as much. With the other man's background he wonders why he's in the LAPD at all. A SHIELD recruiter really should have been the first thing he'd seen after his contract with the military was up.

"Hey," Street calls out over the deafening fire of the indoor shooting range as they both step up to the line, "worst score foots the bill for dinner?" There's a smirk on his face and a challenge in his eyes that Clint finds himself responding to without thought.

"Why the fuck not?" Clint rolls his shoulders and draws. Firing slower than he'd like. He allows himself only one bullet dead center on the target, and clusters the rest loosely enough around it to look accidental. He gives Street the best smirk Gamble is capable of as he holsters his gun. "I ain't going to argue if you want to waste your money."

"Fuck you, I can beat that," Street bluffs as Clint flips the switch to bring the target in. Clint pulls it down and slaps it against Street's chest with a laugh. Already attaching the next target as the man eyes the holes and is almost visibly regretting his bet. 

"The fuck you can," Clint steps back and mockingly waves Street up to take aim as the target resets. 

To his credit, Street _tries_. Clint gleefully mocks him for the one stray round that fell just outside of the bullseye as he makes Street pay for a monstrous pizza after their shift is up. Street doesn't take it lying down though and gives back just as much as Clint can dish out.

Street is a good man, and that's why Clint lets himself enjoy working with him without feeling guilty.

~

They're in the bar that's become "theirs" when familiar arms wrap around Clint's neck and a sultry voice says in his ear, just loud enough for the others to hear, "Well hello there handsome."

It takes everything Clint has not to give that cheesy line the beat down it so rightly deserves and instead turn a sleazy Brian Gamble smile on the woman as he snakes his arms around her. That struggle is the only reason why Natasha used that line and the wicked glint in her eyes as he lets his hands wander down into dangerous territory proves it.

Clint lets his grin widen as he asks, "Hey, wanna fuck?"

Clint doesn't flinch as Natasha's nails bite into the soft bits of his neck as she drags him off to the dark hallway that leads to the bathrooms. The both of them ignore the cacophony of catcalls from Brian's coworkers. Clint slams the blonde woman up against the wall the second they're out of the light and devours her showy moans in an equally showy kiss while being very careful to not pin her wrists in any way. 

Natasha wraps her legs around him and rewards his regard by grinding down hard against his dick because she's a sadistic bitch like that. Clint shoves a hand up the scrap of cloth that's supposed to be a skirt, groping for the string of the thong he knows she's got to be wearing, and stops when he feels the scratchy line of stitches winding up the soft flesh of her inner thigh. A ladder of them that's too precise to be holding together a lucky shot.

"You've got an admirer," Nat says when he breaks the kiss to give her a _look_. Her nails scrape harshly through his hair and down his neck. There'll be welts left there for days. It's a warning and an answer all at once. She won't talk about it and she's perfectly fine. "Are you seducing the innocents again?"

Clint buries a sigh in her neck as he bites a reprimand for the wound and the words into her skin. She lets him get away with it. 

He doesn't need to look back to know what she's talking about. Street's eyes are a heavy weight against his back and impossible to miss. It 's something that Clint has been ignoring for the better part of a month now. A hand that lingers, a stare that lasts just a hair too long, the way words seem to twist in strange ways when they're alone together. 

It's something that's snuck up on him in the year he's been working this mission. "Not really my type, and I don't think I'm his either. Maybe he's just got a thing for smoking hot blondes?"

Natasha bucks away from the wall and breaks away with a smile that really doesn't belong on her face. She slips her hands into the front of his jeans and playfully pulls him into the men's room. Something small and cold is slipped into his back pocket, but Clint won't check what it is until he's alone in the apartment. 

Natasha's laugh is close to her real one as he puts her up on a sink. One hand sliding under the elastic of her thong and the other carefully mapping out the extent of the stitches before he drops down to his knees. Her next comment comes out on a breathy moan, "You're such a _liar_."

~

Brian brags the whole next day about the busty blonde who'd choked on his dick until Street not so playfully threatens to put his face through three separate panes of glass. Clint makes sure to needle the man about how much he obviously needs to get laid, and arranges another bar hop. Loudly so the others can hear, with the sole goal of getting Street sloshed and fucked.

Street nearly does slam his head through a locker for that, and Gamble only cackles at the man's horrified look as blood starts flowing from Clint's not-really broken nose.

~

Fuller is not in on anything.

He's a gruff, privileged asshole who needs to get a reality check from the knuckles of a woman's fist, but he isn't in on any of the deals happening. The man's a patsy. One who is getting suspicious of the numbers going wrong all on his own.

Clint watches as the Captain begins requesting original copies of their reports. As he stays a little later at night, and looks a little more worn when Clint comes back in the morning. There are too many files on his desk most shifts, and the man starts looking at all the men under his command with an assessing gaze that brings Coulson to his mind.

Just a little bit.

It's a complication that he passes on to Natasha as she leaves the bed she sometimes shares with him before the sun has even risen.

"He could be useful," Natasha says as she manages to pull on the tightest pair of jeans Clint has ever seen without the aid of a crowbar. And without wincing. He's more impressed by that last bit. 

"He could also wind up dead," Clint points out as he stretches out in the space that has opened up for him. Natasha tends to sprawl when asleep, and is not fond of stray limbs invading her space at night. Something she enforces with sharp elbows and even sharper teeth.

"I'll see what Coulson wants to do," she says as she steals the last edible bit of food from his kitchen. A muffin that he's mostly sure neither of them had purchased. "The analysts have been wanting him to bring in someone more organic to track some of the higher ups."

"Yeah," Clint closes his eyes and doesn't hear her leave. He lets himself drift in a half-sleep for five more hours before dragging himself up and into the station.

He's yanked into the locker room almost immediately by Street who hisses, "The fuck did you do, Brian?"

"You have no evidence, you can't prove nothing!" Clint cocks an amused eyebrow at the man who doesn't seem to find the quip funny. "What's crawled in your panties?"

"The Captain," Street scowls. One hand reaching out to touch Clint's shoulder. Unconsciously, or Clint'll eat his favorite bow. "He's been spitting fire and yelling that you need to be in his office the second your sorry ass shows up. What'd you do?"

Well, that was fast. Coulson must've already been planning to bring the man in. Clint wonders who'd gotten the job of waking Fuller up at ass o'clock in the morning to inform him of his future as a SHIELD volunteer. 

He hopes it was Natasha.

"Huh, must've found out I've been screwing his wife and daughter on Saturdays," Clint says with a bright grin and a wink to the worried man. He shrugs Street off and whistles cheerfully as he wanders out and into Fuller's office. "Yo. Heard you wanted to talk with me?"

"Gamble," Fuller's eyes are furious and his voice is pitched not to carry outside of the room. A rarity from the man who has a truly impressive set of lungs for his age. "Shut the door and sit your ass down."

Clint complies and watches the man have a mental breakdown with a grin he doesn't bother hiding, wishing he'd had the foresight to bring popcorn.

~

Street looks equal parts pole-axed and disgusted as Clint stumbles out of his bathroom. Clint looks at the tiny scrap of cloth that's obviously women's underwear and recognizes it as the pair Natasha had bled all over after some punk had gotten very, very lucky just before dying. Clint wonders how the fuck it'd ended up in the sagging mess of cushions he calls a couch.

"Jesus, Jim. Don't you know better than to rummage through a man's couch?" Clint slurs his words and meanders through the apartment. Stumbling over air and ignoring the way Street twitches every time Clint comes close to losing his balance. "Go the fuck home, man."

"You're tanked, Brian," Street still looks disgusted as he nudges the panties away with a boot. "Gotta make sure you don't drown in your own puke."

"Oh fuck you," Clint trips face first into the mattress he calls a bed and ignores the prickly feeling he gets at leaving his back exposed with no one to watch it. Street doesn't count, he's a civilian and doesn't have a clue about the dangers Clint deals with. "Let me have my rockstar death."

Street snorts and Clint hears the couch groan. "Sure, and then I'll have to let the world discover your secret panty collection under your couch. What'd you do? Fuck 'em and run with the goods?"

"Hey, those're mine, you asshole," Clint turned his head to face most of the apartment and feels the crawling sensation relax a bit as he gets a good view through his slit eyes. "Can't a guy feel pretty every once in a while without the peanut gallery chiming in?"

The silence is immediate and heavy and Clint closes his eyes cursing his own damn mouth. In Russian because Natasha isn't there to do it for him. Street is a silent black hole in the room. His tenseness radiating outward and bringing Clint up to high alert.

"Brian?" Street sounds uncertain and wary and a whole host of other things that Clint's just not going to deal with. No. No fucking way is he going to deal with it. He's _undercover_ on a mission, and this right here is not part of the parameters of it. So he just isn't even going to start on it. The crouch groans again as Street shifts and doesn't speak again.

Clint stays silent and fakes sleep until the sun rises and Street climbs off his couch. The floor creaking under his heavy feet and Clint tracks him by sound as the man makes his way to the bed. He relaxes and breathes evenly, feeling the weight of eyes on him as the seconds stretch into minutes. The air stirring around Clint's face and for a moment he almost panics. Tension starts to bleed into his muscles despite his best effort and Clint knows he's seconds away from bolting when the floor creaks again.

Street leaves fairly quietly for a man not trained to be silent.

Clint's almost out of the bed when Natasha falls gracefully out of the open ceiling onto the mattress. He doesn't bother being surprised that she was there, or wonder how long she might have been up there. "What-?"

Natasha holds a hand up. Her fingers curled slightly as they hover just over his cheek in a slow stroke before dropping. The motion is graceful and makes him want to squirm. Clint falls back onto the bed. "Shit."

Natasha gracefully doesn't mention how she'd called it months ago.

~

Brain Gamble disappears on his days off, and Clint resurfaces four hours away from LA in a SHIELD owned warehouse that's mostly used to house wrecked vehicles before they're shipped out to be fixed. Clint had equipped the place with eleven targets when he first arrived. There are closer to twenty now though.

Street is becoming a problem. Clint forces himself to think about it as he rolls across the hood of a firebombed sedan. Two arrows hit two different targets dead center. 

Natasha has been needling Clint about the man's obvious interest for some time. Clint had pushed it off for longer than he should have as something the man would get over. A passing infatuation from an ex-military guy that'd amount to nothing.

It's an assumption that's been proven wrong by the almost touch that Clint can still feel even days later. He rolls under a gutted HUMVEE and sprints for the far side of the warehouse. Pushing himself as fast as he can just to feel the burn of it as he puts an arrow into every target in his path.

Emotional attachments are fine on missions. SHIELD doesn't care what, or who, Clint does so long as he gets his job done, and understands that whatever he has going is over with the mission.

Clint makes an effort to keep attachments to the bare minimum whenever possible. He isn't like Natasha. He can't turn it on and then turn it off as easily as she does. Hell, he feels guilty leaving behind people who call him friend never mind-

Clint cuts a corner too close, clipping his elbow against a rusted tractor, and the arrow hits slightly left of center. "Fuck!"

The word echoes in the warehouse and Clint freezes. He drops into a crouch and edges back into the nearest shadow. Holding completely still. Breathing slowly and evenly despite how much his lungs beg for more air.

There it is, the thing Clint's been trying so very hard to ignore. Street is interested alright, and so is Clint. The attraction had been inevitable really. The normal wonderings of any red-blooded man when he notices someone's eyes lingering a little too long. Complicated by a string of late night bar hops, shitty diners, and even a trip to the _dentist_ that Clint tries not to think about out of context.

Mentally, Clint places a sentry up in the rafters of the warehouse and begins to make his way back across the building. Slow and calculated to avoid detection.

The problem, as Tasha had so cruelly pointed out, isn't that Street is taking an interest in Clint, or that Clint isn't as opposed to that interest as he claims. It's that the man is taking an interest in _Gamble_ and in the real world that is a set up for a tragedy not a romantic comedy that ends well for all involved. Brian Gamble is a piece of shit who's good at his job and not much else. He's a party boy, out for a good time and looking to make himself look good. There's not much else to him than that, and Clint's aware enough to know he's been projecting Barney for a good deal of his interactions so far.

Clint breathes out and worms his way under a low riding car, pausing to eye the open space between him and the exit. There's no way to cross it without being seen. There is another exit in the back that he can use. The crush of vehicles goes up to the door itself, and almost guarantees he won't be detected.

"Fuck it," Clint's tired of crawling around already though. He rolls his last arrow between two fingers and mentally places the sentry in his mind before sliding out into the open area. His bow is up and the arrow loosed almost before his eyes confirm the sentry's position.

He hits the target attached to the industrial fans on the warehouse, dead center, and is out the door before his imagined enemy even has the chance to fall. Sweaty and dusty, Clint strips off his gear. Stowing it in the shitty car he'd picked up from an ad a year back.

Music blares from the radio for three seconds before he cuts it off with a sharp jab. Clint sits behind the wheel and stares at the dusty road that leads him back to the highway, and back to LA. 

Four hours. Clint shifts to drive, setting the time limit as the new parameter for his mission. He has four hours to come up with a plan.

~

"Your plan is shitty," Natasha tells him later, but she doesn't say no. "I have a better plan."

"I came up with a plan first, so we’re doing mine," Clint dodges a kick and gets the feeling that she approves of the distance his plan will gain him. She's never been one to tolerate most emotional attachments.

~

The Chief of Police is a diehard Hydra agent. Clint wonders how the hell he'd made his way through the background checks and the public scrutiny for so long without that little fact pinging on anyone's radar. Coulson had sounded pleased over the phone about the facts that Fuller had managed to pull out, and Clint hopes like hell there won't be a recruitment speech in the man's near future.

Clint shrugs the thought off and drags Street out to a different bar. Just the two of them. It's crowded and dark, and Clint ignores the way Street sticks too close. Ignores the way his hands linger when he bends to shout something in Clint's ear.

A flash of red catches his eye and Clint leans away from where Street has him nearly pressed up against a wall to track Natasha as she pulls a stranger to the bar. Their eyes meet and Clint reminds himself to trust her judgment as he gives a sly wink to Street. Drawing his attention to the pretty women at the bar, "You get the one on the left and I'll get the one on the right."

It's an awkward night. Street and the woman, Lara Boxer, smile and flirt with very little heat. Their eyes wandering and their conversation stilted. Street is almost vibrating with the tense need to get away, and only Nat's vocal demanding of Clint's full attention keeps their little party from breaking up too soon. She pulls them all along to the hotel room she's rented for the night with little effort. Ignoring every attempt Street makes to first extract Clint and run, and then ignoring the man's attempts to sneak away on his own.

Clint doesn't get the chance to see the looks on Lara or Street's faces as they realize where this is going when the door shuts behind them. Natasha uses her speed and strength to put Clint onto the closest bed and straddles him with a wicked smirk. His jeans are already open and pushed down just enough for her hands to shock an honest moan out of him before he's even done bouncing.

The second bed creaks minutes or seconds after Clint groans as she slides over and around him. Slick and tight in the best possible ways. A tiny moan that isn't Natasha's echoes in the room, and Clint hisses as she digs her nails into the side of his face. Forcefully keeping his head from turning to look.

"Don't," she whispers as she pulls him up into a filthy kiss. Her palms flat against his ears, muffling the growing noises he's hearing. "It's better this way."

"Yeah," Clint groans as something hot and sick twists inside him. He closes his eyes and lets Natasha hold him still, lets her block out his senses as she rides him hard and fast. Concentrating on the pleasure of the sex and not the dropping of his stomach. "Fuck, yeah."

~

Street isn't a talkative man at the best of times. He almost shuts down entirely for a week after the hotel. Clint would worry more about the man if Street didn't still regularly call Clint an asshole for throwing things at his head.

If he didn't call _Brian_ an asshole.

Lara shows up at their regular bar four days into the week, and Clint is honestly surprised to see her. Either Nat's been meddling or the sex had been fantastic, because he doesn't think the two of them had hit it off that well to begin with. He ignores the one long look Street gives him as he plays pool and makes sure to throw out a crude comment or three when Street finally leaves the bar with the woman.

Lara sticks around after that. Street stops looking at Clint with anything but resignation in his eyes, and the stray touches stop happening so frequently. Which is what he'd been going for in the end, plan successful. Natasha lets him sleep one night on her lap. Her fingers soothing through his hair as neither of them talk about anything at all.

The mission goes on.

~

Fuller and Coulson are terrifying together. Clint takes Natasha at her word when she reports about the lunch meetings the two have almost weekly now. He tries to imagine what the men would talk about outside of the mission when Fuller calls him in to give Brian Gamble his bi-weekly ass chewing.

"Your, _handler_ ," three years into this thing and the man still trips over the terminology in a way that lets Clint know exactly what the Captain had thought when he’d first heard the term, "has been talking about exit strategies."

Clint perks up, losing the habitual smirk he wears to see Fuller, because this is news to him, "Yeah?"

"Your people are ready to make their move," Fuller sneers and flips through a series of folders in a way that Clint knows means the man is holding something back. Usually, his emotions. Aww, Fuller's going to miss him. "But not until you’re out of the way."

"Awesome," Clint stretches out in the chair. It's about time. They’ve had enough to take down the whole ring for five months now. "So, am I leaving in a body bag or what?"

"Do you know how much paper work that shit leaves me with?" Fuller barks out with a glare. The papers are dropped and irritation washes away any silly "softer" feelings the man might have had. "It’s a God damned nightmare! Fuck you if you think I’m doing any of that for your scrawny ass. You’re getting yourself fired like the mouthy little shit you are!"

"Aw," Clint coos partly because it's expected of him and partly because he's just that kind of an asshole, "you’re going to _miss_ me!"

"Shut up and get out of my office!" Fuller roars. Loud enough to have the guys outside snickering into their coffee and donuts. Clint grins and slides out of the office. Fuller’s voice blaring out just before the door closes, "And do some fucking work for once, Gamble! Make it look like you’re earning that paycheck we give you!"

~

"A month," Natasha gives him the timeline as she carefully traces over Brian Gamble’s tattoos with jagua ink.

"Coulson got a plan?" Clint lays back and admires the cobwebs that’ve taken up residence in the far corner of the apartment. They're intricate and pretty enough to look at in the dim light of the morning. Which is the only reason the two of them have been careful not to disturb them when climbing up the ceiling.

"Hit and run was his first plan," Nat flicks the thin brush she’s using this time. Adding minuscule flourishes to the design that’s stayed static for years. "Fuller got him to reconsider. They’re looking into administrative dismissal. Something ugly and public."

"To be a fly on the wall for that conversation," Clint grins as he fails to imagine someone other than Fury making Coulson back down from a plan.

Natasha hums, eyes flickering to his briefly before going back to her work. "He might have also been acting on intel about certain attachment issues with Brian Gamble."

"Nat," Clint sucks in a sharp breath and closes his eyes for the exhale. "You didn’t."

"He had to know," Nat doesn’t sound sorry or regretful in the least, and Clint doesn’t really expect her to. He’s known her too long to expect that. "You know Street would have been an issue."

He would. A year into a live in arrangement with Lara, looking at fucking engagement rings, and Clint knows that Street would still be an issue. Clint ignores the hollow feeling in his gut as his mind finally catches onto the fact that he's about to be pulled out, away from Street. "He’ll be an issue either way, Nat."

"Not if you give him a good reason not be an issue."

"No," Clint opens his eyes and stares up into cold steel. The grip on his arm tightens enough to be painful. " _No_ , Natasha."

"Yes," there is no give in her face as she stares him down. "You’re done Clint. This mission is _over_. It’s time to destroy all your ties here and go back. You’re not the only one who’ll end up hurt if you don’t. You know that."

And Clint does. Street is a good man, a good cop, and a loyal friend. No matter what out Clint takes, no matter what excuse he gives, the man will be there. Calling him _Brian_ and sticking his nose into things that’ll get him killed way too easily.

Clint unclenches his fists and closes his eyes. "This sucks."

Natasha rubs away the bloodless, crescent moons his nails have bit into his palms and says nothing.

~

Natasha’s initial plan to get Street to back off had been as simple and shitty as Clint’s, and filled with about twenty more times mind fuckery. Clint wonders as he drags an unprotesting Street to a bar if it would’ve been simpler in the long run for him if he’d taken her advice in the first place.

~

"So, so fucking," Street laughs as Clint pours him onto the bed. He bounces on the mattress, still sputtering about a lame joke from an hour ago. His face is flushed red with alcohol and he looks damn good on Clint’s bed. "Muffins!"

"Yeah, buddy," Clint swallows thickly, preparing himself for the hurt that's coming as he kneels down to drag Street’s boots off. He wishes he could be exactly as drunk as he's pretending to be. "Muffins. Aint’t they a bitch?"

Street laughs and there isn’t a single bit of tension or wariness in his body as Clint slides the man’s belt off. Fingers working open the fly button of the man’s jeans far too easily. Clint almost worries that he’s poured too much alcohol down Street’s throat before the man chokes on a laugh.

Street struggles up onto his elbows and gapes down at Clint with fuzzy but still alert eyes. Clint lets him stare as he works Street’s jeans down his thighs. Not caring that it catches on his boxers and drags them down enough to reveal a dark trail of hair and sharp hipbones. "What’re you doing?"

"What’s it look like I’m doing?" Clint doesn’t wince as he gives a patented and practiced Brian Gamble leer up at Street. His fingers curling under the elastic of the boxers and dragging those down even further. Unsurprised by the thick dick he’s seen too many times out of the corner of his eyes in the locker room, but he's still not totally prepared for the surge of want that fills him. Almost strong enough to cancel out the way his chest is _aching_.

"You," Street has nothing to say. Only stares in disbelief as Clint runs his hands up his exposed thighs. Fingers curling around the hardening dick before Clint leans down and kisses the tip. Street collapses with a groan onto the bed. "Oh fuck, Bri-"

Clint swallows him down all the way, sucking hard enough to make Street buck and nearly scream. He has to back off as Street’s dick grows fully hard and threatens to gag him. He wraps his left hand around the base and twists as he begins to bob his head. Riding the sharp buck of Street’s hips easily.

"Oh fuck! Wait, wait," Street’s fingers scrabble through Clint’s hair. Trying and failing to find purchase. Clint swallows, and Street nearly keens. "Slow down. Fuck! Brian, slow the fuck down! I’m gonna."

 _Good_. Clint closes his eyes and groans, listening to the incoherent sounds the vibration draw from Street. Using every dirty little trick he’s learned to get the man off hard and fast. Clint sucks harder, edging into painful territory just slightly, but that little edge Clint knows will be enough to make it all better.

"Fuck, yes!" Street nearly screams and Clint chokes as the man bucks up hard. The only warning he gets before his mouth is filled with come. Clint coughs and turns his head away. His hand taking over, stroking Street through his orgasm, and feeling the warm slide of come dripping down his face. "Brian!"

Clint presses his face hard into Street’s thigh, his breath coming faster than it has any right to be. He wants to turn back and lick the man clean. Get every last bit of him in his mouth and do it all over again. His jeans pop open, and Clint hisses as he gets a hand on his dick. Stripping his erection hard and fast and not giving one damn for what was coming next.

"Shit! Come on," Street’s fingers pull Clint’s head back, his voice awed as Clint shuts his eyes tight. Refusing to look as he feels his orgasm build up far faster than it should. "Lemme see. Let me see you Brian."

Clint whines at the words and pants as Street’s rough fingers drag across his face. Thumb catching against his lips and Clint opens his mouth to suck it in. Tongue flat against the pad and tasting skin and salt as Clint bucks up into his own hand. Fingers tight as he twists his hand just under the head of his dick, catching the sensitive spot with each stroke 

"Look at me. Brian, look at me," Street urges. Thumb pressing down on his tongue. Street’s other hand playing with the cooling spunk on his face, drawing patterns and rubbing it into Clint’s skin. "Brian, please." 

Clint groans and bites down on the thumb in his mouth as he comes hard. Almost chewing on Street’s hand as he milks himself dry. His come painting the side of the mattress and pooling onto the floor. Leaving Clint wrung out and gasping. Held up only by Street’s hands cradling his face. 

"Fuck, yes, Brian," Street’s voice is rough and Clint can feel the words puff against his face as Street shifts under Clint’s upper body. "This. That was-"

Clint Barton draws in a deep breath smelling sweat and sex and Street’s sharp aftershave. 

Brian Gamble blows that breath out with a sneer and opens his eyes. 

~

Clint doesn’t sleep in the bed again. He spends a week twisted around the exposed springs from the couch and Natasha’s bony elbows when she joins him. Her hands always cool against his head and chest when they curl together and don’t talk. At all.

~

"Stay flexible," Coulson says over the phone, and Clint almost smiles to hear the big band music playing lowly in the background. Surprised to find that he’s missed hearing it so much. "Something will come up, and you’ll need to take advantage of it."

_"Hope that fuck was better for you than it was for me."_

"I don’t want any details," Fuller is stressed and lashing out at the slightest provocation. Keeping Clint in his office longer and more often. Building up a record of behavioral problems for Gamble. "Just don’t fuck this shit up!"

_"Better have gotten it out of your system cause you’re not getting it again."_

"There’s a situation," Natasha’s voice is muffled and Clint can make out the echo of screams and gunshots through the phone. "Take the shot when you have it."

_"Fucking fag."_

~

Tension runs high when the call goes out for SWAT. No one notices the extra edge between Street and Gamble. The awkward fumbles between the two men who used to work almost flawlessly together. The way Gamble doesn’t quite meet Street’s eyes, or the decidedly cool edge to Street’s words.

It's a little painful and a lot dangerous going into a situation with their broken dynamics, but when Clint sees a familiar face --not struggling as hard to escape as he knows she can-- he only feels relief. It isn’t the first time Clint's had to shoot another agent for a mission, and isn’t even that high up there on the list of the worst things he’s done for SHIELD.

The play that follows is a relief to Clint. Cementing Gamble’s end. The final act could have gone better though. It’d taken some surprisingly dickish words to get Street to lash out with some of the anger that’s been simmering between them. Clint stalks out aching from the punch Street hadn’t took and glad to leave Brian Gamble behind.

~


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Redid the first chapter a bit. Not much change. Had to really redo this chapter after finally sitting down to watch the movie again. It's amazing how much I was misremembering.

Clint agrees to the clusterfuck that turns out to be Budapest the second his feet are on ground in HQ. His ears lighter from the metal he threw out in a trashcan on the street, and his arms scratched red from removing the top layer of skin to get the damn ink off. He agrees too easily for Natasha’s comfort, and she forces her way onto the mission the second his back is turned.

That’s the only reason Clint wakes up alive in a SHIELD sanctioned hospital a week later. His head aching from too many blows and his skin stretching over his ribs in a way that he knows indicates stitches. Natasha is a dead weight of bones and a plaster cast on his left side in a bed that's not really designed for two people.

They don’t talk about that either.

The backlogged paper work and training schedules that follow their release from the hospital is Coulson’s very own special brand of mother henning. He doesn’t talk about it either. Though Clint has to cancel more than a few extra appointments to see the psych ward that he knows aren’t part of the mandatory requirements for all agents.

Coulson gives him a look every time, but doesn’t push any further. Clint buries himself in SHIELD and tries hard to not think of his time in LA.

~

Clint spends thirty days after his stitches come out alternating between the range and various obstacle courses. Pushing himself hard and breaking records that he and Tasha had set years ago when they both had something to prove. He’s aware of the eyes watching him and the awed whispers of the rookie agents who hadn’t believed any of the rumor mill coming in while he was away. They’ll be making up their own rumors soon enough to throw at the next round of newbies, and Clint knows he’s going to rank high up there with Coulson and Fury this time.

On day thirty-one Clint finds all of his access codes revoked. The only authorization he has is to medical and the front door that leads out into the city. The last is a one way access pass.

It takes him three minutes to break into one of the lesser used gyms tucked away in the corner of one of the lab levels. He’s five minutes into pummeling an innocent punching bag when Coulson strolls in through the door with a gun in hand.

A _tranq_ gun.

"What," Clint catches the bag as it swings back and holds onto it, ready to use if for cover if needed, "the hell?"

Coulson looks him over with a bland but assessing look. His default expression that’s only one of the reasons he rules any poker games he steps into.

"Sir," Clint belatedly adds. The word rusty from how little he’s used it lately, but Coulson has _earned_ that title and Clint doesn’t begrudge him it.

"You have a choice here, Agent Barton," Coulson says after a tiny, approving nod. "You can go out for a beer, maybe some greasy food, and attempt awkward small talk with the public at large. Or," Coulson holds the gun up. Tilting it so Clint can see the red band around the dart in the chamber that tells all and sundry that the poor sucker hit by it is going to be out for a good day or two. "I can shoot you now, dump you in a seedy hotel in another country, and _force_ you to do all of that just to figure out where you are."

It's not an idle threat. Coulson isn't given to exaggeration and Clint's actually woken up in Scotland a time or two before. Clint maps out an escape route for about five seconds. Moves that’d buy him enough time to run while Coulson loads a second dart. All of it stops cold when he hears a tiny click behind him. Above head level, in the ductwork he’d used to enter the gym earlier. “Et tu?”

Natasha doesn’t respond, and Clint doesn’t look back up at her. He throws one last violent punch at the bag. Wild and unrestrained, it only makes the pleasant ache that’s been building in his knuckles turn sharp and sour. Clint steps back from the bag and rubs his hands over his face harshly. Breathing out harder than usual to try and resist the urge to throw out all his anger and annoyance at the two people he trusts most in the world.

Even if they are the only two people who’ll ever understand why he did it, they don’t deserve that kind of shit.

"Fine!" Clint brushes past Coulson and out the door. "Fucking fine."

Clint doesn’t even bother changing as he walks out into the city. He hasn’t worked up a sweat and getting drunk off his ass sounds about perfect.

~

Clint doesn’t even finish his drink at the first bar. He leaves the minute a well-built man with dark hair and eyes slides up and _smiles_ at him. No. Fuck no, he wasn’t going to be that person.

There’s a rave going on in the next bar and the collective age of everyone there seems to be about seventeen. Clint ignores the odd looks he gets as he’s swallowed up by the crowd of stick thin kids with every color in the rainbow hair except black. He nearly downs his own weight in watered down beer, and fucks a blue haired bartender in the back when the man takes a break.

He passes out feeling a little nauseous in the apartment that Nat maintains but never really uses. He repeats that pattern with slight variations for a week before Coulson relents and allows Clint back into HQ. Things slide back to normal after that, and Clint pretends he’s alright with it.

~

Clint’s working his way through a basket of greasy fries in a sports bar when the chair across from him is pulled out with a loud scrape. Fury slides into it with more ease than should be possible for a man of his intensity. Clint stares as Fury takes a drink from a bottle of microbrew. Eyes studying the pool tables Clint had deliberately turned his back to earlier.

_Eyes._ Two of them. One with a tell-tale extra shine to it that’s somehow more of a mind fuck than it has any right to be.

“Um,” Clint stalls as he double checks his surroundings and licks the back of his teeth. Looking for any out of place taste even though he’s already screwed if he’d missed something being slipped into his food.

“We,” Fury says, pointedly not scratching what must be some heavy duty face putty covering up the worst of the scars around what the eyepatch usually covers, “have a _bad_ situation.”

Clint lets a fry fall back into the basket and gives the Director his full attention.

~

How Alex Montel had gotten hold of the names of a dozen of SHIELD’s top operatives —-most of whom are in very delicate undercover missions—- is Coulson and Sitwell’s task. Clint doesn’t envy the admin departments that are about to get thoroughly ransacked for those answers. Natasha is heading up the team sent to extract each compromised agent. Getting them out before Montel can use his information to get them killed. Hill is manning the rest of the agency in Fury's absence.

Clint’s left scrambling after Fury himself to do on ground damage control when informants cough up the man is maneuvering for control of the family business. Arranging accounts and loyalties with a flare that’s hard to believe the elder Montel doesn’t notice. There's has a team close to the father and son in France, already primed and ready to step in should the opportunity present itself. Initial intel reports give a low probability to that happening though, the Montel home ground is a small fortress of security measures. One that is overseen by a mess of political entities too numerous to tangle with on such short notice. Analysts have suggested staking out Montel’s uncle. A lesser protected target that Montel will have to take out shortly after he makes his move.

Clint spends the flight back to LA wondering why the hell a drug runner is be so interested in dirt on SHIELD and not Fury’s words before they separated.

_“I want this fucker nailed when he’s not expecting it. Before he can open his goddamn mouth and kill our people. I’ve got the legal side covered,”_ and there’s a story there that Clint’s still not sure he wants to hear, becuase anything that’s gone so wrong Fury himself steps in has to be world endingly bad, _“and I need you to get in on the less legal side,” it’s unnerving to be stared down by two eyes with Fury’s usual glare. To have the man’s usual bluntness be delivered by an unscarred face. “Brian Gamble’s training and break from the LAPD will get you further than any other agent I can get in there right now.”_

Clint turns over theories of expansion and arrogance and complete stupidity in his mind as he chooses a by the day motel as far from the familiar parts of LA as he can get. He rolls up into a deal gone bad later that day. Just in time to snag a few grateful and dumb thugs out of police custody, and uses them to get himself in a good position to start feeling things out.

He learns names and faces and supply routes. Keeps an ear out for any rumors that might pertain to any of the Montels. Clint reports everything to Fury at the end of the night and doesn’t ask anything about his own tasks as the man blends back into the LAPD. Doesn't ask as Fury brings up names that Clint knows. Passing references that the man throws around as he puts together a trustworthy team he can use.

Clint steers well clear of the police and, when news _finally_ comes in that Montel’s father is dead, he makes the mistake of hoping this clusterfuck will be over soon.

~

Clint remembers why this such a shitty mission the second he spots Street. Smiling and laughing at some pretty, dark haired woman who isn’t Lara. Looking just as good as Clint’s been trying not to remember him being.

Seeing Street after half a year of trying to forget him is the punch to the head that Natasha isn’t there to deliver for getting stupid and going back to familiar places for more information. Rumors of a new bigwig coming in have turned out to not be connected to Montel at all and Clint has been forced into small talk and rounds of bullshitting over a far too familiar pool table to cover his interest.

The look of honest hope and pleasure that makes Street start to smile is gut wrenching. Half a year apparently enough to erase all the shit Brian Gamble had pulled on Street, and Clint knows that he can’t let that go. Can’t let the guy get it into his mind that Brian might be his friend again. Might be anything but the bag of shit he really is.

Clint fixes a smirk on his face and closes in on Street and his new pretty lady. Mouth already burning from the shit he’s about to say as he opens with something faux friendly.

~

“Fury has Montel,” Coulson’s voice is bland over the phone and Clint can pick up the sharp staccato rhythm of a keyboard being absolutely murdered in the background. An indistinct mumble that just might be Sitwell questioning the ancestry of idiots keeping pace behind him.

“Great,” Clint tries not to sound too happy or too hung over as he rolls over in the stale smelling sheets of the bed and looks at the time. Only about five hours since he downed that whiskey bottle and chased it with as much tequila as he could handle without puking. He feels like a hundred miles of flattened roadkill rolled up into a punching bag and set on fire. Not bad, though Nat’d be calling him all sorts of unmanly names in Russian for quitting so soon. “This the recall notice?”

“You haven’t seen the news,” Coulson states and Clint reads all kinds of reprimands in that one sentence. “Turn on the television and get involved in the treasure hunt. We want you to find the group most likely to succeed and infiltrate them. Our main goal is to keep Montel quiet for now and we can't do that if someone else gets him.”

“Understood,” Clint lies easily and fishes out the sticky remote for the staticky tv from under the bed. He has to actually get up and hit the thing a few times before having an epiphany and plugging the power cord in.

Street’s pissed off face greets him first thing and it takes several seconds for Clint to look away to take in what the far too perky woman narrating the scene is saying before the scene cuts into a close up of Montel’s smug smirk as he promises a shitload of money for his freedom.

Clint leaves his room at a run, cursing his fucked up life as he fumbles for the burner cell phone he has. Connecting to the contacts he’s already made and trying to get ahead of the shitstorm that’s brewing.

~

The city is buzzing and there are plenty of idiots in the world who’ve done stupider things for less money. Hell, Clint had been one of those people once upon a time. He knows how it goes and he isn’t surprised in the least.

Clint finds himself swamped in offers from the second he puts out the first inquiry. Gamble has gained himself enough of a rep that everyone wants a piece of him. Most of them are easily ignored. Petty thugs and small time gangs with shaky plans and nothing to back it up. Groups that won’t be able to do shit all without serious help.

Clint gets two calls that are more than that.

The first is from a small militia group that’s been getting more of SHIELD’s attention as they’ve amassed weapons and talent. They call themselves Human’s First or something close enough to it to declare exactly what kinda group they are.

They officially propose that total anarchy is the only way humanity can survive. Unofficially they’re conspiracists and racists and a lot of other -ist words that are alarming when combined with a weapons cache. The only thing that’s kept them out in the world and not under lock and key is their lack of criminal involvement. Even SHIELD can’t shut down a rabid group like them without having something solid to point at. That all changes when Clint gets a call from a man named Benjamin Watts who rambles for a solid half hour about how much change they can make with Montel’s prize money.

"Sure," Clint finally agrees, cutting into a slow downward spiral on how genocide of certain groups will only better the world. Clint’s just glad not to have to face the man for this rant, because neither he nor Brian Gamble could hide their disdain at this load of shit. "Just tell me what you need me to do and I’ll be there."

Clint calls in the details less than a hour later after agreeing to a worryingly solid plan. The fact that Watts has enough pull to get a _federal_ helicopter hijacked by men loyal to him is more than enough evidence in Clint’s opinion that the group has become a credible threat. Clint arranges supplies, weapons and ammunition, as he tries to figure out how he can weasel his way from a far off sniper’s position to a seat on the helicopter itself.

The second call he gets ends all his planning with a request to meet someone familiar.

~

Fury’s going to throw a shit fit at misreading a person so badly. Clint can’t even find it in himself to be amused by that thought, because he’d been just as wrong.

McCabe had been a weaselly man the few times Clint remembers working with him, but not a crooked one as far as he’d been able to tell. They’d had far too little interaction when Clint was on SWAT for him to have any other impression, and he finds himself thinking that's a damn shame because he really needs more than he has to figure out McCabe’s angle here.

"It’s a lot of money, yeah?" Clint drawls as he hunches over a damn _coffee_ table shredding a sticky pastry. Between Gamble’s punk attitude and the not at all concealing _trenchcoat_ -—seriously?-— McCabe has thrown over his uniform, the two of them are drawing a lot of looks from the young hipster crowd. "Buy yourself a pretty little spot in paradise and not have to worry ever again. Of course I’m interested."

"I thought you would be," McCabe says with a sneer that's all holier than thou. Which is hilarious coming from a man getting ready to sell his entire team out for cash. "That’s why we want you with us on this."

"We?" Clint prods. Letting his suspicion show. God would Fury be shitting bricks if McCabe isn’t the only one turning traitor. "Who all is in this? Don’t tell me you got the sainted Street or his new bitch in on this."

"No!" McCabe shifts and seems to finally notice the attention they’re drawing as he drops his voice. "Your ex doesn’t know shit, and you don’t need to know who all is in on this."

"Bullshit, man," Clint flicks an especially gooey crumb into the other man’s hair and smirks as McCabe messes up his perfectly gelled hair to get it out. "You come to _me_ asking _me_ to plan out how we’re going to do this, and you don’t even want to tell me how many ways we’re going to be splitting the reward? That’s bullshit, T.J. What’s stopping me from going somewhere else and getting a better deal? I got some guys that’ll guarantee me half-"

"You’ll get half!" McCabe snaps, and the touch of venom in his voice is real interesting. Clint’s always pegged him as a calm person. "Half is more than enough for, for what _we_ need to do," and that’s a real interesting flicker of his eyes there too. Clint’s dying to know what McCabe’s angle is. "Now are you in or not? Because the clock is ticking and Montel’ll be out of reach by tonight."

Four hours actually. That’s when the hijacked helicopter is set to pick Montel up. Gamble will need all of those hours to get his hands on a good enough weapon to take out that helicopter, because that’s what McCabe is getting ready to ask him to do. The retrieval will be happening too quick for a good plan to be put into motion otherwise.

"And what," Clint pushes with a cocky smirk that only gets McCabe more visibly riled up, "do you and your mysterious fuckbuddy need to do that’s so important anyway?"

"If you cut one head off, two will take it’s place," McCabe mutters, and if Clint had been anyone else he wouldn’t have heard the man.

"The fuck you say?" Clint grumbles even as he curses in his head. Fucking Hydra. Should’ve known the sweep SHIELD had made wasn’t as clean a they all thought. "Come on, man. Quit being such a secretive little bitch and tell me who else is in on this. Don’t want me putting a hole in him by accident, do you?"

It’s a gamble, but it’s one that Clint’s willing to take as he watches McCabe struggle across from him. He doesn’t push further on _what_ the man wants to do with the money. He’s Hydra. Odds are good that it’s not pleasant, and it’s something SHIELD would end up stopping even if he had a chance of getting free of this clusterfuck.

"You remember Boxer? Nah, of course you wouldn’t. Street’s the one who fucked his sister," McCabe finally allows. Lips turning up in a way Clint doesn’t like. "You satisfied, Gamble? Or do I got to do a dance number to get you to work with us?"

"I’m sold," Clint leans back in his chair and sucks some of the sticky crumbs off of his fingers. Forget Fury, Coulson and Nat will be so pissed over this. "Alright, lay it on me. What’s the plan?"

~

Fury swears inventively when Clint gets a hold of him and tells him the bare bones plan he hashed out with McCabe. There’s a background hum that Clint places as the precinct. “How sure are you he’s Hydra?”

"Almost completely," Clint points and nods over a rifle and the agent trailing him bags it up. Adding more rounds than he’ll ever need to the bag of goodies he asked for much earlier in the day. The weapons dealing front is perfect for this situation. Clint didn’t even have to pretend he wasn’t here for anything but the most illegal shit available on the market. "He's got the weaselly look and attitude of a new recruit though. Bet he was pulled in recently."

Natasha, fresh from her extraction mission, lounges next to the hastily pulled together monitors recording the shitty weaponry SHIELD agents are passing off to the over eager masses below. Each one tagged and very carefully worked over to fail after light use. There’s going to be a massive flood of arrests after this, Clint hopes the LAPD are ready to handle it.

"And he named Boxer," it’s not a question and Clint doesn’t answer it as he decides he’s got enough and shrugs the strap of the beaten duffel bag over his shoulder. "There’s too many fucking hands in the pot here. Take out the nut jobs flying in Barton, and do what you need to do. I’d rather this dirtbag end up in your hands than anyone else's."

"Roger that, sir," Clint stops next to Nat who’s looking over a fast scrolling text feed intently. "Any orders for McCabe and Boxer?"

"I don’t give a fuck about them," Fury says immediately in the tone of voice that let’s Clint know he’d rather bury them than question them. "I want Montel dealt with before we go snake hunting again."

"Yes sir," Clint says to the dial tone. He hangs up and gives the phone back to Tasha. "Any luck?"

"None," Tasha says with more than a little amusement. "All the rats in the system are swimming up to take the bait and there’s not many left who are trustworthy."

"Coulson must be having a field day," Clint drapes his arm over her when she stands up. His hand rucking up her tank as she runs her hands through his hair and leaves a dark and obvious lipstick mark on his neck.

"He’s making life hell for various government officials and agencies," Tasha smiles. Small and wicked as they saunter back downstairs. Her body molding to his and her voice taking on an accent even before they’re out of safety. "Sitwell sent me a video clip of him _giggling_ over his breakfast today."

Clint’s laugh draws eyes but Gamble’s sneer turns them all away, and no one even notices the way he bends the pretty little woman into a fake kiss. He leaves the shop totally unnoticed and that’s just fine by Clint.

~

The plan is simple in the fact that McCabe’s left pretty much everything up to Clint to deal with, and that makes his job a hell of a lot easier. Clint leaves the real work of planning to the clearer heads and focuses on hustling to get in place. Fast because none of this is going to matter if he doesn’t take down that hijacked helicopter first.

There’s a kid waiting for him at the spot Watts had arranged with him. Pinch faced and looking like he was recruited straight out of high school. He’s full of nervous energy as he all but falls over himself leading Clint to a van with blacked out windows that just screams suspicion. Clint slouches inside and tunes out the kid’s jabbering. It’s a repeat of Watts’ rant but it’s less funny coming from someone so young.

"You fucking serious?" Clint mutters when the kid drives them up a _parking garage_. The kid blinks at him stupidly and Clint checks the surrounding area one last time. It’s a really shitty spot to be hitting anything, but Gamble isn’t supposed to be aiming for the helicopter after all. A quick glance at the skyline shows him that the better rooftops are lousy with cops, and he’s almost out of time. There isn’t going to be a better spot than this. "All right. Let’s do this."

The kid goes down hard. Out cold with one punch. He barely has time to settle on the ground before he’s hauled up by an agent. Fields, still a rookie as far as Clint is concerned, barks out quiet orders to her team, and Clint leaves her to it. Dealing with Human’s First is likely going to fall to her after they get Montel anyway.

Clint goes back to setting up the sniper rifle he snagged just for this part of the mission. It’s one that’s been set up to his specifications and is only ever really used by him when he can’t have his bow. He only has to adjust it a little before settling in behind it and waiting. Scanning the horizon and calculating angles and distances.

It’s going to be a hell of a mess no matter how he shoots.

"We have reports of the hijacking," Fields stops to tell him. Her head tilting as she listens to whoever her handler is. Her dark braid flipping over her shoulder and the butt of her rifle as her eyes take in the view Clint's been studying for several minutes now. "The chopper’s five minutes out. No way the cops would have gotten word of it in time."

"Well," Clint can hear the thrumming of the blades as the helicopter comes in. The best bet is to wait until they’re almost on top of the building, just before coming down to land. It get’s the thing out over the streets which are hopefully still on lockdown. He’ll only have a few seconds to take it down before it’s too close to any of the buildings to risk shooting. "Good thing they’ve got us watching out for them."

Clint sees the shadow before the nose clears a building that’s blocked most of his view. Clint breathes in. Slow and even and shoots.

~

It’s a hell of a plan.

"There’s too much attention on Montel," Tasha explains over the phone. Shouting and something mechanical sounding in the background nearly drowning out her discontent growl. "Even with Fury inside we can’t get to him like this."

Clint’s thought up and done crazier things, but nothing quite this complicated in such a short time frame.

"We have some leads," Coulson admits and it sounds like the words are being forced out of his mouth at gunpoint. Which speaks volumes about the quality of those leads. Or lack of. "It’s better to have him alive at this point in time."

Clint walks into a shell of a house not half an hour after the plan was laid out for him and takes in the group of men he’s supposedly hired. They’re a few cuts above the regular street thugs and gang members. Mercenaries and hired killers for the most part. Which means he’s dealing with actual competence when he starts laying the insanely detailed plan SHIELD has been busting their asses setting. The men nod along and the only questions they ask is about money.

Clint promises enough to keep them open to his orders and not much else. They’re all fodder as far as this plan is concerned. Few actual agents will be used and Clint’s glad for it. They’re playing fast and loose with so many rules that it’s bound to bite them in the ass somehow. Gamble grins as the men set off to finish the work SHIELD started when the news hit this morning.

"Ready?" Natasha comes out from one of the sealed back rooms when the last hired muscle is gone. The floors are covered with cords and there’s more tech laying around than Clint can identify. Tasha’s smile is sharp and mean as she pushes him into a chair and he’s immediately swarmed by two techies who look like they haven’t left their labs in over a decade. "Sit back and relax. This won’t hurt a bit."

Natasha, Clint swears to remember, is a _liar_.

~

McCabe calls as Clint’s trying to stop himself from bleeding out through a dozen or so tiny holes in his arms. He’s nervous and it shows in his voice as he lays out the LAPD’s plan. It’s standard fare and fits precisely in with what SHIELD has set out. Clint grunts along and assures the man he’s got it all covered. Shooting down McCabe’s suggestions and laying out his and Boxer's roles in precise terms that the man agrees far too readily to. It’s obvious the man is a goffer in Hydra, and Clint wonders if Boxer is the same. McCabe tries to keep him on the phone when a beep signals another call coming through, and Clint puts the man off with bullshit about getting hired muscle for the next phase of their plan before clicking over.

"You know the plan?" Fury barks before Clint can even say anything.

"Yeah," Clint says as he walks out of the room and into the main part of the empty home. "We got it covered. Anything new I should know about, sir?"

"Just keep your ass covered, and don’t pull any punches until we can get Montel," Fury says. Distracted, and Clint can hear Fuller in the background. His voice rising in a way that Clint’s surprised to find he actually kind of misses. Just a little. "I’m going to murder this pompous prick if this doesn’t end soon."

Clint laughs, and shakes his head when Natasha looks out the door at him. “I think Coulson’d be mad, sir. They really bonded you know?”

"Of course they did," Fury’s voice is dry and could set fire to a bucket of water. Fuller’s voice gets loud again before Clint gets the dial tone and Tasha’s raised eyebrow.

"You got everything you need?" He asks as he slides the phone away.

"For now," Tasha says. She's suited up and armed. Ready to let loose and and looking completely bored with everything going on around her. Her part isn't small, but it's definitely not the usual adrenaline rush she's used for. Normally their positions are switched. Tasha going in undercover and getting up close and personal while Clint supports from a distance. Only occasionally getting in close to the action when things start going down. She doesn't bother hiding the slight worry most people wouldn't notice. "Don't do anything stupid."

"I'd never get outta bed if I did that," Clint grins as starts picking through the gear that's been laid out for him. He takes the warning and the concern and holds it close as he focuses on the Brian Gamble persona. One last time, he tells himself, just once more.

~

If Clint was actually running this operation he’d be sweating bullets right about now. There’s too many moving pieces out of his direct control for anyone to have any peace of mind. He’s not in charge though. That’s a job that goes to some thinktank that Coulson’s heading up behind the scenes. All Clint has to do is play his little role.

He shakes out a case of the nerves that he doesn’t have as a man whose name he’s already forgotten monitors radio traffic. Clint hears the chatter in his earpiece as Fury’s team draws close. The streets are filled with late night crowds and Clint hopes like hell they’ll have the sense to duck and run when the shots start flying.

"Five minutes."

Clint’s moving. Out of the backroom of some closed coffee shop and to the darkened door that leads to the road. One hand resting on the door as he looks for the black SUVs to drive past.

~

The plan is detailed and specific right down to the seconds in what needs to happen to pull it off. There’s still room to wiggle things around though if it’s worth the trouble.

Clint sees a chance as he rushes the SUV and he takes it.

McCabe has a gun on the only man in the vehicle not in on the heist -—and the hair is dark and spiky but Clint _doesn’t_ think about that-— and it’s simple elimination from there. Clint shoots through the dark window and his hired muscle drags Boxer, bloody and already dead out onto the ground. One possible threat down.

And then Clint’s facing Street head on once again. Grinning like mad as he ignores the goddamn gutwrenching look in Street’s eyes. Shoving a gun into his face and ignoring the man’s words as he cuffs him to the steering wheel with a laugh. Keeping the gun pressed tight against Street's vest the whole time to remind him that Brian Gamble isn’t any sort of friend to him. Cars honk loudly as another SUV swerves in traffic getting closer and Clint pulls away.

"Let’s go!" Clint sprints for the subway and Montel, surprisingly, keeps up. The man’s fit for a rich bastard. People scatter with screams and Clint doesn’t pause as he reaches the train. The doors sliding shut and the train taking off just in time.

Clint apes for Street’s benefit --the man's mad but he needs to be madder-- and to get a good look at Fury coming in hot behind the man’s heels. Making sure the Director can see the single finger Clint’s holding up. Just in case the slight change in the plan slipped past him in the heat of the moment.

Also, so he can say he did it and lived to tell the tale. Clint laughs as the platform slides out of view and turns to walk through the train. Passing terrified hostages before he sees the vivid orange Montel is wearing like a fucking silk robe as he lounges on a seat with a smirk fixed firmly on his face. McCabe across from him. Pale and sweaty as he wrings his hands.

Killing Boxer was a calculated risk. Hydra has two different flavors of recruits. The really loyal ones and the only kind of loyal ones. Clint’s counting on McCabe being one of the latter. Loyal to Hydra but not so caring of anyone in his way of promotion, and there has to be something like that on the table for the money Montel’s promising. Something to recoup the major losses they suffered when SHIELD pulled the rug out from under them earlier in the year.

The fact that Clint doesn’t already have a bullet in his back is a good sign he’s right, but the real test comes when he deliberately turns his back to McCabe and Montel. Now that they’re not running from an immediate threat. Now that McCabe, still shaky and shocked looking, has had time to think about it.

McCabe does nothing and Clint marks one more box off as the plan moves on.

~

The tricky part starts as soon as Clint gets his small group into the storm drains. The tight, dark space that has Montel’s lips curling in a sneer. 

Clint hasn’t been in these systems, doesn’t even have a clue about their layout as he turns on his light and looks for the signs he’s trusting were left there for him to follow. It’s a short trip despite McCabe’s minor freak out, and the surprise he finds waiting for him to set up half way through the tunnels.

The mine is a last minute addition that Clint had tried to veto. Explosives just shouldn’t be combined with small tunnels like these ones, but he’d been overruled. At Fury's insistence, and what he wants goes. Clint sets it up, correctly, and hopes like hell Fury knows what he's doing as he marks the tunnel with a smoke grenade. It's more danger than what's really needed in his opinion. He doesn't have to lock the exit grate, but what the hell does he know? He gets paid to do what he's told.

He bitches about it though, softly enough that only the transmitter he's wearing can pick it up. Coulson pointedly doesn't reprimand him for it.

~

Morse looks horrible. It's impressive what a layer of makeup and a bad dye job can do to a beautiful woman. She bleats and cries out just enough as Clint pulls an agent he's never met before off the plane and pushes her back out of the way. Into the seat where the metal of the plane is thickest, and the force of the coming crash don't throw her against anything too hard or sharp.

It's a consideration she rewards him for by raking her sharp heeled shoes down his shins as he pulls her forcefully out of the plane. McCabe is done. Clint can see that in the way the man huddles in the rear of the plane. Montel crouches as bullets fly and Clint ignores the man. His part in escorting the criminal is done. Fury has it from here, and Clint needs to get his own ass out of the line of fire.

"That rope's not long enough," Bobbi mutters between her shrieks as they stagger to the side of the bridge. "Your fat butt's going to free fall to the ground."

"It's not!" Clint sends a few, wildly off center bullets toward where he can see a stupid spiky head poking around the burning plane. He shoves the end of the rope through the side and swings one leg up and over the concrete railing. "You ready?"

"Do it," Bobbi grits out. Hunkering down in a good approximation of a terrified trophy wife while bracing herself to be used as weight. He'd feel bad about it but it's Bobbi. She's done worse to him even before the divorce went through in the name of completing a mission. "And don't fall on your head. It's damaged enough as it is."

"Love you too," Clint mutter as he drops.

~

"Aw, rope," the rope isn’t long enough Clint finds out as he dangles way too far up off the ground. Clint grimaces as he eyes the distance between him and a _moving_ -—who the fuck came up with this plan again?—- train. “This is going to hurt.”

It does hurt. A lot. Clint rolls off the train with a strangled moan. His knees buckling despite his best efforts when he lands on the ground.

Tasha clothes lines Clint before he can get his breath back and drags him into the shadows away from the bridge. Her hard grip leaves him no choice but to follow her through the train yard. Staggering until he can breathe right and convince himself he hasn’t broken any ribs. “Hurry up,” she says when he can move without prodding.

There’s a shout behind them, the sound of someone else making the painful trip down and Clint will stake all his savings that it’s Street. Sirens echo in the distance. The entirety of the LAPD converging on them.

"It’s in place, right?" Clint manages to ask as they take a set of stairs at a dead run. "The-"

"Yes," Tasha doesn’t expand beyond that and Clint’s grateful. The LMDs are creepy as fuck even when it’s not Clint’s face they’re wearing.

There’s a van waiting for them in the street. Windows blacked out and back door open as it idles. Under the authentic looking police decals Clint could swear it’s the same one he rode in earlier with that militia kid.

If it is, it’s already decked out with some sophisticated surveillance systems. Coulson reaches out to turn one of the screens off when they tumble in. Clint catches a glimpse of moving trains and two fighting figures and is glad even as his stomach twists.

"Montel is in police custody again," the older man says. Directing their attention to the shaky cameras of a helicopter showing the bridge as the van pulls out. An orange blur is being escorted to a similar van by someone Clint thinks might be Fury. "We’re about to make the switch."

Clint closes his eyes and settles down on the floor. Listening to Coulson’s steady voice as he communicates with the team on ground. They easily manage to switch Montel and the second LMD amid the chaos with no one noticing a damn thing.

"What about the Hydra agent?" Tasha asks. She’s still standing but the toe of one of her boots keeps nudging his leg. Erratically and without any purpose other than to annoy him as far as Clint can tell. Clint opens his eyes to glare at the back of her head.

"Dead," Coulson replies after a silent pause. "Self inflicted bullet to the head."

Clint snorts. He can hear the finger quotes he knows Coulson is dying to use on that last sentence. Must be a junior agent driving or the man would’ve done it.

"Happy endings all around," Clint mutters. Curling away from Tasha’s feet. "Now when do we get the hell out of here?"

~

They get to leave as the sun starts rising. They end up in another private jet that's a good bit larger than the one they'd given to Bobbi, and Clint takes full advantage of it to stretch out after shrugging out of the bulky body armor Gamble had worn. Montel is well secured in the back and refuses to talk as Clint makes himself comfortable. 

He'd taken supreme satisfaction in the way Montel’s smug face froze when he was brought to the landing strip and realized exactly _who_ had him. Almost a much satisfaction as he got when he laughed in the bastard’s face when the man started in on the money again the second the plane started taxiing. Lifting off to escort Montel to a deep, dark hole that he'll never leave again.

"The hell would I do with a million dollars that I can’t do now?" Clint spreads his arms wide and grins. _His_ grin, not Gamble’s. The sharp and dark thing that he knows matches that spiteful little twist of Natasha’s lips that can make grown men tremble. That matches the intentionally blank and cold stare Coulson switches on and off when he needs people to realize who they’re really dealing with.

The business look for lack of a better word.

Montel stares. Silent and hard eyed. Burning the three of them in his mind for a revenge that just isn’t going to happen. The rest of the flight is blissfully silent.

~

Fury returns a week after most of them have settled back into routine. Clint only notices because a scratched photo appears in the quarters he uses more than the apartment he supposedly leases in the city.

Street grins broad and happy from under Brian Gamble’s arm. Their pool cues held loosely in opposite hands. It’d been taken a year into the initial Hydra sweep op. Before Clint had been forced to push the man away. Keep him further than arms length to keep him alive.

Clint stares at the photo for a long minute before sliding open the bottom drawer of the tiny desk he has and dropping it in with all the other things he never wants to see again. The drawer rattles as he shuts it. Like the last breath of a dying man.


	3. Chapter 3

"What’s the story here?" Tony’s voice is sudden and unwelcome as Clint rolls over in the obscene bed the man insisted gifting each of them with when the Avengers moved into the man’s tower. His ribs scream at the sudden movement, but not as much as his instincts when he realizes he’s so out of it on painkillers he let Tony "Goddammit!" Stark into his room without waking up. Long enough for the man to get bored and go snooping. Granted, that sort of thing can be measured in seconds, but a single second is usually more than Clint needs to go from the sleep of death to fully alert and ready to kill.

"Hey, bird fucker," Tony’s voice is closer and more annoying. Drawing Clint out of the confused sleep the drugs have been pulling him into. "Wake up! What’s up with all the metal? You go through a punk phase or something?"

Clint drags his eyes open and turns his head out of his pillows to glare fuzzily at Tony. The man is wearing sweats and an oil stained wife beater. His hair is a mess and his eyes are suspiciously bright. All the signs he needs to know the man’s been locked out of every lab in the building and is likely running from a search party headed up by Pepper to get him into a bed. He waves something thin and flimsy in Clint’s face. A shit eating grin nearly swallowing his face as he pushes for details. Of something.

The stitches in his back from Clint’s unfortunate meeting with a glass window pull as Clint reaches up to yank the glossy picture out of the man’s hands. His fingers feel the scratches in it immediately, and if he wasn’t still riding high on the drugs he’d know exactly what Tony was looking at without having to see it for himself. 

Gamble and Street grin just as brightly as Clint tries not to remember, and it’s every bit as painful to see again as he’d always known it would be. Even with the years between the end of that operation and now. Clint hastily stuffs the photo under his pillow to keep Tony’s hands from snatching it up again. Stuffing his own face back into it so the other man can’t see what Clint’s probably too out of it to hide. “Fuck off, Stark.”

"Aw, come on, Clint," there’s enough of a pause between Clint’s words and Tony’s whine that Clint knows to be wary of the off note in the man’s voice. To curse silently because it’s clear that Tony saw _something_ in Clint’s face, and the man doesn’t know when to leave well enough alone. "Come on! Share with the rest of the class."

His bed dips, and the only reason Clint feels that is because Tony’s right on top of him. The mattress is one of those really expensive memory foam things that don’t shift easily. Blunt fingers poke his back. Deftly avoiding the stitches and finding every cracked rib he has. All three of them. Clint growls. Tony’s like a ten year old. The only thing missing is—

"Tell me!" Tony half sings and half chants. High and irritating in the way only Stark can be. "Tell me, tell me! You know I won’t quit until you do. Tell me! Just give it up, save yourself the pain of being broken down. Tell me, tell me, tell me!"

"Christ, Stark!" Clint rolls and ignores the sharp throb of pain as he lashes out. Hitting a nerve hard enough to make the man yelp and rear back. "It was a mission, I had to play a part. Alright?"

Clint takes the opportunity to reach up and shove. Sending Tony reeling backward off the bed and taking extreme pleasure in the curse of pain that follows the loud thump of Tony hitting the floor. “You fucker!” There’s a series of smaller thumps as Clint rolls back over into the position that he’s found hurts the least. Closing his eyes and feeling himself drift despite the still prominent threat of Tony being in the room. “And liar! You’re such a liar.”

"Nn," Clint feels himself starting to slide under even as a hand smacks his shoulder. He barely feels it. "Ask Tash. ‘m too tired for this shit."

If Tony says anything else Clint doesn’t hear it.

~

"Stark is getting nosy," Natasha says as Clint stretches out. There’s only a bit of pain from the healed cuts on his back. The new scar tissue getting accustomed to being moved. The dull throb in his ribs is negligible. Not even close to the burning in his muscles from the light workout he’d just finished. His body has grown lax from a month of little use.

It feels good and Clint itches to get to the range for an hour or two.

"He’s always nosy," Clint says as Tasha pushes on his upper back to get him to go down further, bending him more in half and going past that point. Clint grunts and takes the burn. "What else is new?"

"He asked me about LA," Tasha says as she lets Clint up after a slow count to thirty. She moves to sit next to him and does that thing with her right leg that always makes Clint vaguely jealous even as he wants to wince. "About the Hydra and Montel ops."

Of course. Because Tony Stark never lets anything go, ever. “Goddammit, Stark.”

"Hm," Tasha hums as she switches legs. Clint rolls backwards up onto his hands. Balancing there for a few seconds before flipping to his feet. "I put him off, but you know he’s going to look into it himself."

"Yeah," Clint feels like slamming his head into the wall a dozen or so times. Revisiting Brian Gamble is not something Clint has ever wanted to do. The fact that he’s going to have to just to stop Tony from doing something stupid doesn’t make it any easier. "I’ll figure something out."

"Let me know if you need to move the body," Tasha calls out as Clint heads out the door. His fingers twitching for his bow. He waves to acknowledge her remark that’s only half in jest. She likes Tony in her own way, but that’s never meant quite the same thing to her as it does to most people.

~

Jarvis is kind enough to alert Clint when Tony starts setting up parameters for a facial recognition program based off a copy of the picture that Clint’s honestly not sure how the man got a hold of after he removed the entire desk he knew he _never_ should have brought with him.

Clint lets himself into the lab Tony’s holed up in through the door that Jarvis helpfully leaves unlocked. He moves quietly behind the man who’s inputing a string of nonsense into a screen that’s already going through a facial database. Clint hops up onto the cabinet that’s directly below the main ventilation shaft to this lab. Making himself comfortable before picking up a stray pen and flicking it at the computer Tony’s bent over. Hitting the power button solidly enough to make the screen flicker, bringing up the “Are you sure?” shut down prompt.

If he wasn’t so sure there’s a backup battery he would’ve gone for the power cord.

Tony jumps slightly before spinning to glare at Clint. He eyes Clint and turns a frustrated glare up to the closed vent. “Those were some _good_ sensors, you better not have destroyed them getting in.”

Clint smiles and says nothing, because it’s funny how absolutely convinced the man is that Clint camps out in the dusty as fuck ceilings. The fact that none of the increasingly complex sensors Tony places there --by hand and listening to Tony curse as he gets stuck in a shaft is the second funniest shit Clint’s ever seen in his life-- have registered his presence doesn’t seem to phase his belief one bit.

"What do you need, Agent Barton?" Tony smirks as he turns back and gets the program up and running again. Not bothering to hide what he’s doing at all. "I’m kinda busy here with this," Tony waves his hands airly over the screen, "thing. So, make it quick would you?"

"Well, if you’re _busy_ ," Clint drawls out, not showing any bit of the irritation he’s feeling show. It’s like blood in Tony’s shark tank. Any hint of discomfort or a flinch will get his undivided attention, because Tony always demands immediate satisfaction of anything that perks his curiosity. "I guess I can tell you about that picture you wanted to know about later."

Clint’s got his fingers hooked inside the cover of the vent when Tony kicks off from the desk and propels himself towards Clint on the wheeled chair. Tony’s eyes are bright and eager even as he makes a show of being disinterested. “Whoa, whoa! I’m not that busy if you feel the need to spill your guts.”

It’s one of the more annoying yet endearing traits the man has, and one that Clint has managed to escape being the focus of until now. Tony’s need to force himself into the lives of the people around him with the power of his ego, and then finding things to do --to give, to _fix_ \-- that would earn him the right to stay there. A behavior that Tasha had written a several page report on when she was playing secretary for the man, and Clint has read up on since finding himself playing puppet to gods with issues.

Clint snorts and drops back down to sprawl out on the cabinet. There’s a blanket, one of Bruce’s probably, folded up that he uses to cushion his elbows. “How about we just cut to the chase here. I _know_ you’ve already hacked the files,” he doesn’t but it’s _Tony_ , of course he’s done as much snooping as he could before even approaching Natasha. “So just tell me what it is you want to know.”

Tony doesn’t do him the discourtesy of pulling his punch. He flicks his hand and one of the holographic screens he’s so proud of lights up. The slightly pixelated copy of the picture shows up and Clint doesn’t flinch from it. Just looks placidly at it before turning back to Tony with a raised eyebrow. “Who’s your friend?”

"A cop," Clint replies. The picture doesn’t hurt as much to see, but he’s been prepping himself for this since Natasha brought the subject up a week ago. "He was my partner while I was undercover. He was a good guy, we got along well."

"Yeah, I can see that," Clint strains but there’s nothing in Tony’s voice that could be considered an innuendo. A rarity from him, but then there were certain things that happened that hadn’t made it into the official reports. "What about after? You guys get along just as well when you had to play bad guy?"

"No," Clint can’t get the word out quite as placidly as he wants, but Tony already knows something’s up. So the gravel in his voice seems to go unnoticed as Tony keeps his eyes focused on Clint. "Like I said, he was a good guy, and good guys kill bad guys like me."

"That was an LMD," Tony says immediately. Almost accusingly, and that’s just another point in the list of Tony knowing Coulson’s alive. Clint’s fully convinced, but Tasha’s still hedging her bets on that one. " _You’re_ still alive."

"Yep," Clint agrees easily, "but Brian Gamble isn’t, and there’s a lot riding on him staying that way."

"Huh," Tony’s eyes go to slits and his head tilts like he’s trying to see something against the sun. "I don’t get it."

Dangerous words coming from Tony and Clint knows it. “What’s to get, Stark? I went undercover, busted some Hydra ass, and got the fuck out. End of story.”

"Well, yeah, but not that. It’s the," Tony twirls one pointed finger at the blown up photo, " _that_."

"The pool cues?" Clint quips because he’s actually not sure where the hell the man’s going with this. "You never play a game of pool, Stark? I’m sure you can pay someone to teach you how to play."

"Fuck you, I learn off of YouTube for free! And I could take you in a game any day," Tony’s mouth moves a little like he’s going to continue but he stops himself with a glare that he shares equally with the lab and Clint. "So not the point, feather head. I was talking about the _friend_ thing. You don’t do shit like that easily. Hell, it took you most of a year to even _trust_ us enough to walk around without bodyarmor!"

"You kept shooting _bottle rockets_ at me!" Or things that had started off as bottle rockets. Clint’s fairly sure the things could be considered actual weapons of small destruction by the time Steve set his foot down and refused to budge no matter how much Tony whined. Combined with the fact that his last barrage had landed worryingly close to Tasha Clint had felt safe enough to leave the vests behind eventually.

"Forget getting anything even vaguely personal out of you," Tony continues as if Clint hadn’t brought up a very valid point. "You don’t share, you don’t hang out, you don’t _go_ out! You’re just," Tony flings his hands, both of them, up to the ceiling, "around! Hanging out, watching us all like a creep from the ceilings. You’re like ceiling cat!"

"Ceiling what?" Clint laughed and shook his head. "Tony when’s the last time you slept?"

"My point!" Tony exclaims with a scowl as he begins to wheel himself back towards the desk. "My point is that you don’t do the friend thing a lot. You can count your friends with one hand. Hell, maybe just one _finger_ ," and Tony doesn’t seem all that upset by the last statement, that Clint probably didn't consider Tony a friend despite living with him. Which is something the behavioral experts in SHIELD would be all over if Clint was ever masochistic enough to report it like he should. "So you shouldn’t have to throw out the few you have just because a mission ends."

"Tony," Clint sits up and props his elbows on his knees only to find himself staring at the back of Tony’s head. The man’s typing a bit and the slide of the database goes faster. "It was a _mission_. Faking-"

"Oh, no, please tell me you’re not about to bullshit me," Tony turns around to give Clint a _look_ that’s kinda like the ones Tasha give him when he’s doing something she thinks is particularly stupid. Clint wonders if Tony picked that up deliberately or not. "Cause that’s all that’s going to come out of your mouth if you’re about to say any of that," his head jerks back to the screen, "is fake."

"It is," Clint says, and then continues right over the outraged sound Tony’s making, "because Brian Gamble was fake. You can’t have any sort of friendship with a lie, Stark, because I’m not _that_ ," Clint slides off the cabinet and shoves his hands into his pockets as he nods at the screen, "person."

Tony looks ready to argue. A mulish expression crossing his face. Jesus fucking Christ.

"Look, that was ten years ago, Stark," Clint tries to reason, but reasoning with Tony can be like trying to reason with a five-year-old at the best of times. "A lot of shit went down then, and it wasn’t all that good," which is an understatement. Clint’s had a decade to think about how killing Gamble could have fucked Street up. No matter their relationship, they’d been best friends for years. With that potential for more that Clint had tried hard to destroy. "As in years of therapy not good. The man’s dealt with it by now, and bringing it all back up will ruin that," and that seems to get through to Tony a bit. The man’s frowning now. The one he gets when something he’s working on doesn’t go his way. "Drop it, Stark. Your brony tendencies are starting to lead you astray."

"Like you don’t know the theme song yourself," Tony bites back, and it’s a give. The only one Tony will give as he backs down.

For the moment. Clint has no illusions that Tony will pick it right back up once he’s had time to think his way around Clint’s points. The man’s need to fix things for people is almost pathological. Clint turns and walks out of the lab, taking the victory for what it is. Temporary. “No shit. You don’t argue with the Hulk when he wants to watch the pretty ponies, Stark. Not unless you’re an Asgardian god.”

"Thor likes Rainbow Dash!" Tony shouts just before the door shuts.

~

"I know this might come as a complete surprise to you, but I am actually a pretty busy man," Coulson sounds annoyed, but Clint knows better than to take the man at face value. Coulson’s secretly pleased that Clint and Natasha keep going to him with problems. Clint’d put good money on the man smiling a little right now if he’s alone in whatever bunker Fury’s got him hiding in. "What do you want, Barton?"

"Stark got hold of classified mission documents," Clint stretches out on the battered couch he’d found in an alley on the way to moving into the tower so long ago. Worn and stained and slightly moldy smelling. He’d taken it along just to see Tony’s face when it got brought up. It’d been a priceless expression that Clint still remembers fondly. Tony had retaliated by having the thing cleaned so thoroughly that the couch changed color overnight, and the only thing keeping him from declaring it a new couch was the way it groaned when he sat on it.

"Imagine that," Coulson says. Bland and totally deadpan. "Tony Stark looking at things he shouldn’t. I’m beyond shocked. Tell me something new, Barton."

"It’s an undercover mission and Stark’s not letting it go," Clint shifts until he feels a sharp coil go sideways. "If he continues people peripherally involved will find out about the mission. Actually, I think that’s what he’s intending to happen."

"That’s new for him," Coulson sounds a bit more intrigued, and Clint knows he’s got most of the man’s attention now. "What case are we talking about?"

Clint hesitates because this is getting perilously close to talking about it, but he’s already started crossing that bridge with Tony. “LA, ten years ago.”

"I see," and Clint can’t read much in Coulson’s voice now. It’s the tone of voice he uses when he’s feeling his way around something. Looking for a clue on where he needs to jump. He’s used it more on Natasha than Clint, but it’s still one he knows pretty well. "And how did he get started on that?"

"Drugs," Clint lets out a sharp bark of laughter. "So many drugs. I don’t do well with the new brand of painkillers apparently."

"Hm," Coulson’s biting back the urge to push on that point. His instincts to pinpoint just how badly his asset might react to a new drug still present despite having an entire team now. "I’ll look into it," and this is a favor, because it’s not his job to look out for Clint anymore. He’s relieved though. Good as Sitwell is at handling the crazy that is the Avengers, there’s just some things that Clint won’t go to him with.

"Thanks," Clint says and there’s not much else to say. A far off alarm goes off. Giving them an excuse to hang up before it can get awkward.

~

"Pepper has given me blanket permission to maim Stark so long as I don’t touch his face," Natasha says as Clint sights down a spinning target. "His looks are apparently directly linked to the company stock."

Clint pauses and blinks. Letting the target spin a full two rotations before letting loose. The target swings, off kilter with the added weight of the arrow dead center. “I don’t want to know what we’re maiming him for do I?”

"You already know," Tasha glides across the range. Deftly picking arrows out of targets as she moves. She stops by a target that has no arrows, and gives him a pointed look. Clint obliges her by firing off his last two arrows. Sinking them in right underneath the hand she’s resting on it.

"Allow me my denial?" It’s a pathetic request and Tasha gives it all the consideration it deserves when she flicks one of his arrows back at him with a snap of her wrist. It falls short because she’s too far away but she makes her point. "He doing anything different?"

Last Clint was aware, Tony was still running facial recognition programs. Methodically. Starting in New York and working out from there. Granted, that was over a week ago. So who knows what the man is onto now.

"He’s in LA. _Physically_ ," Tasha says, the arrows click in her hands as she walks back and dumps them on a table next to the door. Rolling them out so that Clint can sort through them and check for damage. "Conducting _interviews_ for a new security position with very vague details on what might or might not be expected of the new hire."

Clint places his bow down and braces his hands on the table. Closing his eyes and rolling his head in a slow circle. Feeling the muscles in his neck stretch and his bones crack. “Let me guess. He’s interviewing people with law enforcement background.”

" _And_ military," Tasha sits cross legged on the table as Clint opens his eyes and focuses on the arrows. They’re practice ones. Nothing he’d take in the field with him, but there’s no reason to not take care of them. "Priority is being given to anyone with SWAT experience."

"Aw, fuck," Clint drops the arrows he was examining and laughs. Because if he’s not laughing at this brewing shit storm he’s going to find the dullest arrow he has and go to LA to shove it by hand through Tony’s thick head. The man couldn’t have baited the hook more perfectly. There is no question that Tony knows who Street is now. "Fuck my life."

Cool fingers knead the tense muscles at the base of his neck and Clint drops his head forward to let Tasha have her way. Her thumb presses painfully into a knot and he grimaces through it as she prods it loose. “SHIELD is recruiting,” she says and Clint wonders why she says that, because he knows this already. SHIELD is always recruiting. Their turnover rate is so phenomenally high it's a wonder they can get anything done. “We’re dealing more with police on local matters and anyone with that kind of background can only help.”

It takes Clint a second to line up what she’s saying, and he doesn’t know if he should groan or feel grateful that Coulson is apparently doing more than just looking into the whole thing. “Crap.”

Tasha squeezes his neck once and pulls away. Her boots hit the ground with a soft thump that’s intentional, and is something she’s been doing more often. In the tower only. “Let’s go.”

Clint straightens up and looks at her. She’s got her phone out and is tapping something out on the screen. “What?”

"Mission," Tasha says as she starts walking toward the door. Clint’s phone remains silent for another minute before he gets the alert calling him in for briefing. The delay is a clear indication that he wasn’t originally meant to be in on this mission. Tasha is obviously pleased with herself as she leaves to go start pulling out their kits. "Let’s go, Clint."

Clint smiles as he follows her. She’s always known the best ways to distract him.

~

Tony’s sulking when Clint finally drags himself out of his rooms a few days after returning. He’s getting old. It never used to take him this much time to recover from a few days of not sleeping. He’s still tired when he gets to the communal floor which has the best coffee pot in the tower. A move by Pepper to force Tony to occasionally drag himself out from the labs every once in a while.

Heavy emphasis on the occasionally.

Steve’s leaning against one of the counters when Clint wanders in. He gives Clint a half smile, but all his attention is on Tony. Tony looks like he’s on the down swing of one of his manic bouts of inventing that only ever really happens when he’s frustrated with something. Clint’s got a pretty good idea what this one is when Tony swings around with the coffee pot in hand to point it at him, “You!”

"No you," Clint says just to see Tony’s face scrunch up as he tries to parse that out. The man is racking up a serious sleep debt. Clint hops up onto the counter beside Steve and watches as Tony turns in a circle a few times before spotting his mug. An oversized thing with binary on it that probably says something witty or offensive.

"No," Tony makes a triumphant noise as he pours a good portion of the pot out. He takes a healthy drink and then refills his mug again before setting the pot back into the machine. This time he points at Clint with his mug. Coffee sloshes over the rim a bit and drips to the floor. "You."

"Me," Clint points to himself and nods. Then he points to Tony and says, "You."

Steve snorts loudly, and does a bad job covering up his laugh with a totally fake sounding cough. Tony rolls his eyes, “Oh, fuck off, Tarzan.”

"You’re the one grunting monosyllables at me," Clint settles back on the counter and decides to wait for the pot to start brewing again rather than make it past Tony to get the dregs.

"Fancy words aren’t your best suit, Birdy," Tony grumbles through the coffee. Clint’s not sure if he’s breathing it in or actually drinking it anymore. "Leave them to the professionals."

"Speaking of professionals," Clint decides to get it all out and done with now instead of waiting for Tony to passive aggressively prod at him until the inevitable explosion that won’t be so passive. "I heard you were in LA looking for some security professionals. What happened there?"

Steve looks suddenly interested, and Tony nearly growls, “As if you don’t know! Who in their right mind would choose SHIELD over me? Have you seen the benefit package I give my employees? And the pay! I _know_ what they pay you and you're at the top end of the paygrade. Who in their right mind would turn down a salary that's double that? Who!?"

"Adrenaline junkies?" Clint drawls out because that's one of the points that definitely swayed Street. The fact that Tony probably insisted on a face to face meeting and annoyed the hell out of the man is probably another. Also, the lure of doing good for everyone instead of one particular rich person because Street is also a good man who likes to help people. He doesn't say any of that to Tony though. Tony's more likely to understand the rush of adrenaline anyway.

"Well, true," as predicted he concedes the point. Scowling down at his socked feet before rallying the way only Tony Stark can. "This isn't over. I'll get you and your little dog too!"

Tony spins and slips a little on the spilt coffee before doing a remarkably graceful strut out of the kitchen. It's a diva worthy strut that Clint's sure the man practices daily. Clint snorts and goes for the abandoned coffee pot.

"I didn't think Tony would have problems filling a security position," Steve says behind Clint. It's a statement that doesn't really prod. Giving Clint an out because Steve is the very definition of 'mind your own business' about many things.

"Tony was gunning for someone specific," Clint says as he tops his cup up with an unhealthy amount of sugar for the hell of it. He turns and Steve looks curious, but Clint really doesn't want to get into it. He shrugs. "Nat said something about SHIELD sniping him from Tony. Figured that's why he's upset."

Steve makes a thoughtful noise but continues to stare at Clint expectantly. Blue eyes calm and very not judgmental at all. Waiting for Clint to elaborate. 

He doesn't.

Steve nods and moves to the fridge. "I'm making eggs. You want some?"

"Sure," Clint agrees because Steve, unlike Tony, knows when to let things just drop.

Clint's almost pathetically grateful for that.

~

It's not dropped. Tony needles Clint about it often enough for that to be clear, but it's also readily apparent that the man can't actually do anything more about it for the time being. Clint doesn't allow himself to be hopeful about that though. Tony Stark is an annoying persistent man too used to getting his way. He's under no illusions on how long Tony will let this little set back deter him.

Clint doesn't call Coulson again, and he doesn't so much as glance at the highly classified files on new recruits that Tony has taken to emailing him. Training videos, psychological assessments, class schedules, and --eventually-- mission logs. All minor, comparatively, and very far away from the places Clint finds himself. He doesn't allow himself to be hopeful about that either. Life has a way of fucking Clint over in the worst possible ways at the worst possible times.

It's an explosion waiting to happen. Clint can feel it. He just can't see the timer so he doesn't know when it's going to blow in his face yet.

~

The Winter Soldier defects in what has to be the most spectacular shit show Clint's ever been privileged to see, and he'd laugh at it. Laugh at the sheer coincidence of it all and the mind screw that seems to have been waiting for almost seventy _years_ to happen but-

But Clint finds himself letting himself into Tasha's quarters almost nightly now. Curling around the tiny, fragile ball she sometimes is and not saying anything. Not one damn word, because he's heard enough casual references to _a man_ over the years to know. A man who taught, a man who spoke, a man who meant something before the Red Room nearly destroyed her ability to feel.

He holds her tight and doesn't speak as she sleeps through the night. Ignoring the finger shaped bruises she presses into his arms whenever she startles awake and purposefully doesn't let him see her face until she's wiped it clean of anything incriminating.

He gets up in the morning after she's left and wanders the Tower. Looks until he finds Steve. Pummeling the supposedly indestructible bags in the gym, holding a cold cup of coffee in the kitchen, or hunched over an unread book in some dark corner. His eyes always far off and not noticing Clint until he's reaching out. Pulling him back to the present with something. A word, a joke, a problem.

He doesn't talk about it with Steve either, and the man looks so grateful about it that Clint takes to carefully sabotaging shit in Tony's labs. Just enough to make the man spend more and more time fixing it, and then trying to figure out how it all went wrong in the first place. A reprieve for Steve who's too damn nice to tell the man where to stick his nosy questions.

Clint spends time on the Helicarrier too. Slipping through the security that neither Tasha or Steve have clearance for. Technically, Clint doesn't either, but Fury's smart enough to know he has to give a little or he'll find himself on the wrong end of a siege again. No one questions it when Clint slips into the debriefing room or into the observation chamber. His presence is taken for granted by all. Even the Winter Soldier, _a man_ who used to be called James Barnes.

Bucky, he insists in a voice that slips from Russian to Brooklyn accent faster than most ears can discern. He smirks and snarls as he gives up secrets and holds back memories. His eyes are dark with everything they've seen and so damn fragile that Clint has no doubts at all anymore that he taught Natasha.

Clint waits for the information dump to get well into a second cycle of repetition --it takes fours days-- before letting himself into the heavily monitored cell room that Bucky isn't sleeping in. He drops a book Steve's doodled all over in his lap and slumps next to him on the uncomfortable cot in clothes that still smell like Tasha.

He doesn't say a word, and Bucky doesn't snap his neck. Probably the best outcome anyone can hope for of this debacle.

It's tiring. Watching all these pieces and trying to, well, not fix it, but make it better. Make it bearable. Clint finds himself in the communal kitchen most evenings. Slumped over the table and tired as hell. It's where Bruce finds him most days.

The man only smiles and brews up a pot of coffee that is almost lethal in how strong it is. "You are my favorite person, ever," Clint says when Bruce sits across from him with Clint's coffee and tea for himself.

"You're welcome," Bruce says with a smile that verges on a smirk, and they drink in silence before going their own ways.

~

The files and attachments show up frequently in Clint's email. He keeps deleting them. Perfectly fine to live in ignorance. It's been months. Street has to have established himself in with a team. Gotten the hang of the paperwork and inherent crazy that comes with SHIELD. Gotten comfortable enough that his continued employment is a sure thing. That it's apparent he's not going to leave anytime soon. 

Long enough that someone has to have sat him down and debriefed him on the classified missions he was part of. Fully debriefed to prevent any nasty shocks from coming up further down the road.

Clint thinks about that. A lot. A depressing lot of times that usually ends with him challenging Bucky or Tasha to a drinking contest just because it's stupid enough to break his chain of thought most nights.

~

The timer on his own personal shit show reaches zero during some infestation of six foot glowing bugs in Idaho, and, because it's Clint's life, it happens after one of the worst falls of his life.

The three inches of solid _rebar_ going through the right side of his chest certainly beats out the time he landed on the full back end of a junk collector's truck. Especially since it seems to have gone straight through his lung. He's judging that by the way he's breathing out blood and has to struggle to get any air in. He could be wrong though. It's hard to judge anything given the amount of sheer pain he's in.

It's also why it takes so long for Clint to place why the horrified face of the SHIELD agent supporting his upper body is so damn familiar.

"Breathe, breathe," Street chants and this has to be a nightmare for him. Something out of the man's worst dreams, because he's not even yelling. He's just saying it quietly. Like if he gets any louder something will break. "Jesus fucking Christ."

Clint doesn't have the breath to say anything, can't even stop his labored pants long enough make a reassuring noise. To apologize, to deny, to do anything at all. Cool hands brush against his face and Clint forces his eyes open to find Tasha hovering over him. Face closed as she wads up some cloth around the bar. Pressing it in despite the way Clint spasms from the pain of it.

"Iron Man, I need you here now," Tasha's voice is steady and purposeful. He can feel one hand worming under his back. She gives Street a cool glare that's sent sane men running, but the man hasn't stopped looking at Clint's face once and he misses it. "Don't move him."

"I," Street's throat bobs as he swallows and shakes his head, and Clint doesn't need to ask to know that the man knows nothing. That he hasn't been briefed on the operations he'd been tangled up in before joining. Clint can't imagine Coulson forgetting that, but it does speak strongly of Tony's meddling. "What the fuck?"

The roar of Iron Man landing and clanking forward drowns out more words, and Clint can't really focus enough to read Street's lips.

"Dammit, Tweety," Tony replaces Tasha. His face plate up as he frowns down at his chest like it's one of Dummy's frequent messes. "What've we told you about jumping off buildings?"

Tasha gives Clint a nod as she steps back and says, reassuringly, "It's not as bad as Budapest."

"One of these days," Tony says conversationally as he takes in the damage without touching, "you two are going to tell me about that and why the only reports SHIELD has for that mission is a request form for lemons."

Clint rasps out a croak and feels his lips twitch. Those lemons had been awesome, and the fact that it's all Tony could ever find is all the proof Clint needs that Coulson has a sense of humor. Clint tries to laugh and distantly notes that he's starting to slide into shock.

"The rod is attached to the concrete," Tasha says just out of sight, and Clint can feel her weight settle on his legs even as his mind detaches from the situation. The pressure of Tasha and Street holding him still the only thing keeping him connected to the world. "Can you remove it without injuring him further?"

"Sure, shouldn't be too hard," Tony's down and peering under him leaving Clint with a wonderful view of Street's face as too many things run across it for Clint to name. "Might not even cauterize his lungs on accident if he doesn't move," Tony pops back up long enough to look Clint in the eyes with a rare seriousness. "I'm not going to lie, Bird Brain, this is going to hurt like a bitch. Feel free to scream. No one here'll think any less of you for it."

It's all the warning he gets before Street's eyes go comically wide and Clint hears the whine of a repulsor start up far too close to his head. Everything after that is just _pain_ until he mercifully blacks out.

He doesn't think he screams, but he could be wrong.


	4. Chapter 4

At this point in his life, there isn't a single inch of his body that hasn't been hurt in some way. Clint's an expert at dealing with traumatic injuries, and he doesn't struggle to regain full consciousness even when the outside world starts niggling at him. Not until the heavy haze of narcotics starts to wear off at least. The pain isn't worth it for the front row seat to whatever operation he's being subjected to.

Clint drifts, vaguely aware of things happening and doesn't try to reach for more until he can feel his right foot starting to itch.

Natasha is curled up on the end of his bed when he wakes up. Her bare feet tucked under his ass to keep them warm. Boots the size of his head dent the pillow next to his face. Shedding dirt and tiny rocks when he moves his head to glare at Bucky sitting in a chair he has to have acquired from one of the _good_ debriefing rooms.

Bucky's grin is mean and cheerful as he nudges Clint's face with one foot. "How many times are we going to have to tell you this? No matter how hard you flap your arms you aren't going to fly, Barton."

"Considering he's not dead," Tasha punts in, jabbing her clawed fingers into the soft muscle of his calves. "At least one more time."

"Fuck you both, very much," Clint grits out through a throat that feels like it's on fire, and maybe he did scream after all. It's either that or he's been out a good deal longer than he thinks he has. It's always tricky gauging time coming out from an injury, but Clint thinks he does a pretty good job more often than not. "I can do anything I want if I just believe in it hard enough."

The boots disappear and Bucky shoves a dementedly twisted straw into his mouth. It's got googly eyes glued on it that he can't help but stare at even as he starts sucking down the best water he's ever tasted. He can make out blurred lines below the eyes and is pretty sure the thing is from Tony. When Bucky pulls the empty cup back he can see they're purple and look vaguely like his uniform. "Seriously?"

Bucky snorts as he gets up to get more water. Tasha smiles at him, "He feels guilty. You should see the things we threw out."

"Damn," Clint slowly levers himself up. Feeling the way his chest pulls and twinges. Oh, it's going to be a _bitch_ recovering from this one. "I didn't scream that bad did I?"

"Loud and high," Bucky says as he drops back into the chair and shoves the cup into Clint's hands. "Very high. I thought your dick was being crushed or something."

He's on the Helicarrier. He's been in medical often enough that he knows just from the way the light shines in his eyes. Which either means he was flown back to the East coast and worked on here or he got transferred after the surgery. It all depends on how long he's been out of it. He angles a look at Tasha.

"A week," she says without further prompting, and, because she's psychic and can see the future, continues to explain. "The bugs were dealt with. You were the only injury we had," she pauses to let him fully appreciate the stupidity of his move. Which was actually a really brilliant plan on his part to avoid getting _eaten_ , and it worked so she can just bite him. "You didn't miss much. Clean up, debriefing, Stark and Banner getting their hands on a new machine," Tasha pauses and a faint line creases her forehead as she frowns. "There's also been a series of overdue briefings given as well."

Clint grimaces. He'd been hoping, futilely, that had been something he'd made up. Bucky leans back in his chair and eyes them both with enough disinterest for Clint to know Tasha spilled everything to him at some point and time. Maybe while he was unconscious. Maybe well before that.

"How the fuck did that happen anyway?" Clint finally asks, because this whole thing was Coulson's plan in the first place and he knows how very much the man hates leaving things unfinished. "Tony?"

"Most likely," Tasha says with a faint frown that few people realize is one of her most terrifying facial features. "There's been multiple attempts to get Agent Street reassigned that were all blocked after a review flag was put on his files. It's possible some things slipped through the cracks in the electronic tug of war that happened before that."

"Fan _fucking_ tastic," Clint swears before sucking down the rest of the cool water. Tony Stark sticking his nose into things and messing them up so spectacularly isn't a surprise. It's nothing less than what Clint expected to happen from the start of the whole sorry mess.

It doesn't do much to lessen his urge to strangle Tony with a spare bow string.

Clint throws the empty glass into Bucky's lap and ignores the very cool stare he gets in return for that. He's found that Bucky is every bit as much like Tasha as he isn't, and the man's usual dead gazes don't fool him one bit. If Bucky didn't like Clint, Clint would've gotten a bullet to the head before the first week was out. "And?"

"SHIELD has a very extensive branch of therapists for a reason," Tasha replies as she pulls her feet out and gracefully rolls off the bed. Bending to tug on the boots tucked under his bed. "I've heard they've been getting used a lot," Tasha straightens up and looks down at him. Her lips are pressed tight because something is bothering her, and Clint becomes aware in that moment that he's not the one Bucky's giving a _look_ to anymore.

"You should probably talk to him yourself though," the words come out reluctantly. Dragged by the force of Bucky's eyes and some unheard talk they've obviously had before. She doesn't look at Bucky, but Clint knows her too well to believe that she's not fully aware of him. "To clear things up."

She doesn't wait for an answer that isn't going to come. Clint's still too busy gaping as she spins on one foot and stalks quickly out of the room.

"Ok, what?" Clint turns to Bucky, who's getting up, for an answer. Tasha has made her feelings on the whole matter very clear from the very beginning.

"Life isn't as clear cut as she likes to think it should be," there's a faint smile on the man's face and Clint knew they were fucking. He'd expected it from the second they'd pulled him into SHIELD custody. What he didn't know is written all over that bit of fondness and the uncomfortable way Tasha has urged him to talk. "You let her get away with too much denial."

"Fuck you very much," Clint grumbles even though it's true. He did let her get away with shit, but it's always been a two way road. Tasha had done her own fair share of enabling in their time together. "No one 'lets' Tasha do anything, she does exactly what she wants when she wants."

Bucky laughs the whole way out, and Clint can still hear him even after the door has been closed.

~

There's a secret to being angry at Tony Stark that only those closest to him know.

"I mean, if your own boss isn't going to sign off on getting you some _real_ armor that won't tear like wet toilet paper at the slightest impact you might want to start reconsidering your retirement plans."

It's all in the way the man processes the guilt that he loudly claims he never feels, but the people who know him can see eating him up from inside.

"We get into so much shit that it's just not practical for you to be wearing the standard armor all the other Agents wear. This stuff is much better, and it's even lighter than that scrap of cloth so you'll be better off in the long run."

Guilt exacerbates Tony's instinctive need to throw money at something until it's fixed. Whether that broken thing is property, people, or even the more intangible 'feelings' that makes the man flinch and try to run. Gifts and money will be thrown at it until things turn out alright.

"Look, it's purple!"

Clint closes his eyes when Tony tries to wave the vest he's been doing his damndest to get Clint to look at for the last hour. Refusing to even look at it, and not giving in by responding to any of Tony's increasingly frantic upselling talks. He sounds like a used car salesman, desperately trying to offload a really old lemon of a car on someone.

"You're not looking. You have to at least look at the damn thing!"

It's the best way to hammer in a point with Tony. Pepper swears it's the only way. Ignore him and his gifts.

"Is it not purple enough?"

There's a good sized chunk in Tony's psych report detailing the effects of attention deprivation and Howard Stark. It leaves Clint feeling like he's kicking a litter of puppies before setting them on fire, but it has nothing on what it feels like remembering Street's face hovering over him.

"It's not. I'll fix that," there's steely determination in the man's voice and Clint opens his eyes to watch Tony march out of the room. Vest clenched tight in one hand and already muttering about color wheels.

Clint breathes out a carefully measured breath and unclenches his hands from the sheets. He wonders, if he's careful in measuring, if he can make a long enough noose out of the sheets before Tony's back with another vest or motorcycle or whatever else he has half built in his labs. He's still not sure who he wants to use it most on though; Tony or himself.

"You'll forgive him," Tasha says when she creeps in and sees Clint's face and smells the linger smell of Tony's cologne.

"Yeah," Clint grudgingly admits. "But I can make him really sweat for it, can't I?"

"Two more days at least," Tasha finishes tucking her boots under the bed and makes herself comfortable with a small, worn book. "Pepper says she needs him functioning after that though."

"If he comes back, don't wake me," Clint says after nodding his agreement to the timeline. He's due for his mid-day nap and Tony's been very good at interrupting them lately.

"Not even for that hovercycle concept you've been drooling over?" Tasha asks too sweetly and Clint cracks an eye back open to glare at the back of her book.

"Right, like that's ever going to get off the ground without exploding and raining shrapnel death down on everyone," Clint closes his eyes again and settles in for the twenty minutes that he's usually allowed. 

The hovercycle has been a pipe dream in SHIELD for almost as long as Clint's been in, but too many people have tried it with disastrous results. Sure, Tony seems to have a good handle on making things fly that shouldn't, but Clint's not holding his breath for it.

~

Tony doesn't come back for three entire days, putting him well beyond the time limit Pepper gave and Clint's slightly disappointed at the loss of time to make him squirm but that all flies out of his head when Tony manages to kidnap him from the medical wing and bring him out to one of the hangars.

"Dammit, Tasha, you sold me out," Clint mutters as Tony makes like Vanna White in presenting the fully functioning hovercycle --"No, no, it's totally safe! I had Steve and Bucky testing it out just to be sure, and if those idiots couldn't kill themselves on it you'll be just fine!"-- to him. There's some modifications from the plans that Clint almost knows by heart, and it's painted a subdued black with touches of purple on it that are way too toned down for a gift from Tony. Man had to be reaching his breaking point then in his guilt trip.

"You like it?" Tony's beaming, already reading his answer from Clint's stunned silence and preening under a job well done. "Yes or _hell_ yes? I'll also accept profuse exclamations of my genius at deciphering the rubbish that was on those plans as well. Seriously, it was all trash. They had it running off of _gas_ why did they ever expect it to work with that kind of engine in the first place?"

"Dammit, Tony," Clint groans as he moves away from the wall he really wasn't using as a crutch and makes his way over to the bike. It's a big, clunky thing but the leather of the seat and handles feels just right when he reaches out to touch it.

"We good?" Tony's face is oddly, for the man, serious as he waits for the answer.

Clint sighs and lowers himself down onto the bike. The leather, probably real, curves just right like it's molded to fit his ass. Clint tries not to think too hard on the fact that it probably has been made specifically to fit his ass.

He's already over the anger that had gripped him when he woke up. He gives Tony a narrow eyes look, "If you can keep your damn nose out of shit that doesn't concern you, then yeah. We're good."

"Everything concerns me," Tony say. Flippant and warning all at once.

"Not if I tell you it isn't," Tony frowns, reluctant to concede the point even as the tight lines around his eyes and mouth ease. "And not when Natasha backs me up on that."

"Fine," Tony agrees, reluctant and grudging as he shoves his obnoxious shades back on and rocks on his heels for a bit. The frown eases quickly as Tony reaches over to flip the ignition switch. The bike purrs to life with a growl that has to be for effect given Tony's made such a point about it not having the kind of engine that would produce that sound. "So, you going to take her on a test drive or what? We've only got a few more minutes before one of the docs notices you've made a break for it and the containment unit gets sent out to sedate your sorry ass."

"If they can catch me on this, I'm blaming you for selling me a lemon," Clint says with a snort and leans over the handles of the bike as he kicks it off the ground. Ignoring the twinge in his chest as the bike rises smoothly. Tony shouts something else but Clint can't hear him over the roar of the bike as he takes off.

~

It's the longest month of Clint's life. Physical therapy has never been his favorite thing in the world, and, even with SHIELD's enhanced everything, it's an absolute bitch coming back from getting stabbed in the chest. Clint feels a strain of pity for Coulson for the first week of it until Tasha lets slip the fact that Coulson got a kind of gene therapy that made the physical therapy not necessary for him.

Clint may or may not have left several long, ranting voicemails on a phone that does not actually exist. A few days later he gets a package from an address that doesn't exist. Inside he finds one sleeve of powdered donuts.

Laughing doesn't hurt as much anymore, but it does make eating the donuts hard.

~

"He wants to see you," Tasha leads with and Clint thinks about playing dumb for the three seconds it takes her to kick her shoes off.

If Natasha is putting herself out there and approaching Street to _talk_ there's no point in trying to pretend anything. She won't appreciate it, and is likely to take it out on his skin. Recent injuries be damned.

"Barnes put you up to it," Clint says instead and goes into his kitchen to get another mug of coffee. He relishes the fact that he can stretch his arm up into the cabinet without feeling pain now. The skin over his chest is tighter than he'd like but it won't take long before even that eases. "Or Tony, but it was Barnes you listened to."

Bucky is a surprisingly pushy man when it comes to feelings. Unlike Steve who seems to have the whole reserved, speak-not thing going for him. Clint had thought it was a time era thing, but Bucky's been proving that theory dead wrong.

"It doesn't matter," Tasha climbs up onto one of counters and takes her mug from him. It's black with nothing in it. She likes it that way or with so much other crap in it that it can't rightly be called coffee anymore. There's no in between for her. "He wants to see you, and you're going to see him so you can stop moping."

"I'm not moping," Clint says and tops his own mug off. "Weren't you the one who said I should let this all go?"

"I said you shouldn't get attached, and you ignored me," Tasha takes a deep drink with an appreciative sniff. "I said you should let it go, and you ignored me."

"I did not!"

"You kept a picture and let Tony find it," Tasha raises one eyebrow at him. "You ignored me when I said to let it go."

Clint's not going to argue this with her. Not because she's right, but because it's not really her point.

"You got attached and you didn't let it go," Tasha continues as if he hasn't said anything at all. "And now your attachment has found you and isn't going to let this go either. He _will_ come here if you don't go to him."

There's a hint, faint and barely there, of approval in her voice. Clint blames Bucky for that too, though he can't quite decide if it's a good change or not just yet. It's a change and that's all he can stand to think about right now.

"You have a week," Tasha states and slides down from the counter. She stalks out into the suite and he hears the TV click on. He doesn't follow her though. He stays in the kitchen and steadily drains his coffee pot dry.

~

A week is way too much time, and he thinks Tasha did that deliberately to punish him for making her get involved in all of this. 

Clint talks himself into and out of just going half a dozen times before he somehow manages to trick himself into a flight down to Texas. What's going on in Texas, Clint has no idea. He'd stopped trying to pay attention to the situations happening there the minute he was told Street had transferred there.

No one questions him when he offloads with supplies being sent. His rank is high enough that he can pretty much do what he wants when he's out of sight of Fury and Hill. He's got to jump through the usual hoops to get hold of a bike, but that's nothing new.

Clint rides around for a bit, but now he's just putting it off. He can't even really claim to get lost or not know where Street is. Tasha had left him a disturbingly comprehensive site survey just a few days ago. Maps of the area color coded in a way only they can understand. Lines of sight, potential evac routes, affiliation or loyalties of people around the area. 

Street lives in a SHIELD owned apartment complex. Five floors that has fewer units than it should because parts of it are storage. The agents living there in charge of keeping the storage secured in their off time. It's the kind of dual purpose that Clint's come to expect. It makes more work for the agents but it also means each of the units being lived in are surrounded by rooms used for storage. A better sound proofing he hasn't found yet.

Clint pulls up in a back lot and makes his way up to the building. Walking slow but deliberately. Like he belongs. He's seen. A man cleaning out his car watches him walk up, and a woman watering her box garden takes note of him and the bike. Clint tosses a salute to them both and grins at the caution he sees. The back door is out of both of their lines of sight and he gets through it in under five seconds. It's a standard SHIELD lock, just like Tasha had told him, and they've both long mastered breaking through them with little effort.

The car washer drops his head when he sees Clint move through a window. Obviously thinking Clint has the right to be there. Which he does, but he thinks he's going to put a word in about how easy it is to get in anyway. He doesn't meet the green thumb agent as he goes past her floor and straight to the top.

He wonders if Street's assignment of living quarters was deliberate. Clint wonders on a lot of things as he props himself up against the wall opposite the door to Street's apartment. As he settles in to wait for the man to get off work for the day.

~

Clint hears boots and the click of claws on the stairs but doesn't open his eyes until he hears the sound of keys.

The dog is new. Last he knew, Street hadn't had one since JD had to be put down. It sits obediently at Street's feet. Pink tongue lolling out as it pants slightly from the customary run. Tasha has gone on at length on Streets habits. Both at work and after.

He looks good for a man in his forties, and Clint knows that's no easy thing. He does good himself, but he's a top level field agent and can't let himself get as bad as some of the other desk agents he works with. Street's always been active though, and he's only packed on more muscle over the years. His hair is still thick, but Clint's eyes catch a bit of silver edging its way in on a few strands.

Clint pushes down on the urge to crack a joke at it and waits. He wants to say something to break the tension filling the hall, but it's not his place right now. Gamble would have done that, but Gamble never existed and Street is meeting a stranger right now.

Street shoves open the door and the dog trots in. His face is still and unsurprised when he turns to look at Clint and points inside. His jaw is tight but his body loose in a way that's more dangerous than anything else.

Clint wordlessly walks in. It's open, and Clint can see the rough areas on the floor where walls have been taken down. There's only two doors set in one wall. A bedroom and a bathroom because everything else is in the open area.

"Beer?" Street asks from a corner that's been designated as a kitchen and throws a bottle at Clint before he can decline.

Clint catches it easily and leans against the corner of a counter as Street pulls out his own bottle from an ancient looking fridge that works really good going by the cold glass in his hand. Beads of condensation start to form up on the glass as he he rolls it between his palms.

"What, not good enough?" Street asks with an edge that's going to spiral out of control fast when he sees Clint not drinking.

"Don't really like drinking if I can help it," Clint says and watches Street go still in shock, because Gamble had been borderline alcoholic. Almost to the point where he couldn't function without regular drinking.

Clint can and will drink as he needs to, but he doesn't like doing it. The few times he's willingly done it without the excuse of a mission have only reinforced his dislike of drinking. He could have popped the cap and taken a few swigs to put Street at ease, but it's probably important to start pointing out the differences between Clint and Gamble. 

"You don't drink," Street's voice is flat but there's a tremble to his voice that's dark, and his fingers tighten on the glass bottle in a way that Clint is all too familiar with.

"Only when a mission calls for it," Clint says and can almost hear the snap of something breaking in Street as the man deliberately sets the bottle down. And then fails to step forward. Fails to respond, just stands there looking into the distance and breathing deliberately. Clint should keep his mouth shut until the man calms down, but there's a ghost of a punch between them that was never thrown when it should have been. "I've been cleared for duty, I'm not-"

Street packs a vicious fucking punch that leaves Clint seeing stars as he stumbles back a step. Clint blinks them away and moves his jaw back and forth a bit before bringing the bottle up to press against the fireball of pain on the left side of his face. Clint doesn't remember the man hitting this hard back in California. "Damn, Street."

Street cracks his knuckles and his face is still dark and angry, but some of the tension has seeped out of him. It eases something in Clint. This isn't going to be pretty and it's not going to be easy, but it's not impossible. Not anymore.

"There a good Chinese place that delivers?" Clint asks because he's hungry and food can only help. Nothing like stuffing his mouth when he doesn't have the words to say about something.

Street closes his eyes and makes a sound that's suspiciously close to a laugh.

~

There is a place that delivers, but Street forces Clint to walk down to the front door to get it. There's no elevator in the building, but the trip down five flights and then back up gives him more time to prepare for the inquisition.

"When'd you get your ears pierced?" Clint asks, because the flash of gold at both lobes had caught his attention at first. He'd held back on commenting though because he's really got nothing more to say about it that doesn't show case what a spectacular asshole Clint really is.

"A while back," Street's jaw works more than the fried rice can account for. Dark brown eyes flick up to Clint before skittering away, but they still seem to read some of what Clint's trying not to project. "Fuck off, you used to wear more metal than this."

"It fit the character," Clint shrugs off the assessment. The divots are still in his ears, but the years have made them nearly unnoticeable.

"The character. Right," Street slows his inhalation of food, and Clint bets he doesn't feel very hungry anymore. The container gets dropped onto the coffee table in front of the couch that the man eats at. There's no sign of anyone else ever having been in the apartment so he probably never bothered looking for anything more. "So, Clint," his name is harsh and bangs up against Street's teeth in a way that makes it clear that's not the name he almost said, "tell me about that."

Clint doesn't stop eating. Just leans back in the chair across from the couch. It's falling apart a little but damn comfortable. "You got the debrief," Street winces, but it's well hidden enough that most people wouldn't see it. "You know the how and the why. What in particular do you want to know about?"

"I want to know why you fucked me," Street doesn't hesitate in throwing out the sharpest accusation he's got in his arsenal.

Clint swallows down lo mein noodles that are going cold and a big fucking ball of pain that he'd thought had dulled over the years. It's hard, but not the worst thing he's ever had to swallow around.

"The mission was ending and I needed to break all ties. Standard procedure," which Street learned all about training up, and Clint sees the knowledge flash through his eyes, "to keep uninvolved people safe. Fuller wasn't going to let Gamble die off, he insisted on something less drastic."

Clint shoves another fork of noodles into his mouth but Street doesn't prod him for more. Just sits and watches him. Not quite patiently, but more like he's still absorbing Clint's first words.

"You can't have people trying to find you afterwards. Especially not when you're finishing an OP dealing with Hydra. You dealt with Hydra yet?" Clint asks even though he already knows the answer to that. Street hasn't. He's a capable agent and a damn good shot, but he's still working through the levels. Still proving himself trustworthy even with the added recommendations that came from Coulson. "Hydra is first class crazy. They don't care about anything but doing what they want. They don't even hesitate to go after people if they think they can get us to blink. You know Boxer and McGabe were hardcore Hydra. You ever see the files of what they did?"

The files were light due to the two men's relative newness to the group, but they'd not been empty. He knows Street red them by the way his face goes pale. Probably even got to see the ones on Lara too. Damn but Clint regretted ever introducing the woman to him.

"That's nothing on what Hydra's willing to do. I left anyone behind that they thought they could use against me for even a fraction of a second?" Clint leaves the thought off there, because he knows that Lara's file had pictures in it. The woman had gotten vicious after Clint killed her brother.

"You were an issue, Street," Clint says and he lets his voice soften. Lets some of the regret come through and color his words. "You wouldn't have given Gamble up at all, and I'd tried to push you away."

Street's eyes flare but he doesn't say anything.

"It wasn't my first choice, but I needed you to let him go. I needed Gamble to disappear and not have anyone trying to find him later," Clint thinks about drumming his fork on his now empty carton, but that's the kind of annoying asshole move Gamble did. He's trying not to slip back into that character right now. 

"You couldn't have-" Street starts. Hot and angry before his brain catches up with him and trips the words up. Street _knows_ that Clint couldn't have said anything. Couldn't have let him in on the sensitive mission, the undercover op. "You could have told me to just fuck off."

"I could've," Clint agrees easily and then locks eyes with Street. Something he's been avoiding the whole time he's been here. Clint is well aware of his body and assets. He's used them often enough in missions, and he still remembers the things that had flustered Street all those years ago. "But you still wouldn't have let him go, would you?"

Clint doesn't need Street to say anything. He can see it in his eyes. There's attraction there. Reluctant but there all the same. Despite everything Street still wants him. He might not like it or the man Clint really is, but he still wants him.

"You have any fucking idea how that shit felt?" Street says after shaking off the unwanted reminder. He's glaring now, and there's too much he wants to say. The words are getting stuck in his mouth like they always do when Street gets too worked up. "Do you know how much that fucked me up? All of it?"

"Yeah, I do know. Welcome to SHIELD," Clint doesn't smile or try to deflect with humor. There's a reason why he'd done some breaking and entering with Tasha after Coulson was declared dead. They've both been in too long to trust anything that's said even with evidence staring them back in the face. This kind of mindscrew is par for the course.

"Get the fuck out," Street says and all the tension is back in his voice as he holds himself very, very still.

Clint drops his container and fork on the table and lets himself out without another word.


End file.
